Companies provide high-tech solutions for low-tech patientsBy Sheila Dwyer, Body1 Staff
Chronic health conditions affect 90 million Americans. These medical issues, such as asthma and diabetes, are responsible for 75 percent of total health care costs in the United States. Chronic sufferers typically spend much of their time at the emergency room or their doctor’s office, incurring huge medical bills.
Some medical companies aim to change the way that these patients receive their health care. These companies realize that with extra monitoring and attention, costly emergency room visits can be averted. Developers of these systems see potential markets in nursing homes, assisted living complexes, and even prisons, where the populations tend to include patients with chronic illnesses.
Lifechart.com targets asthma sufferers. Its service allows patients to upload their daily breathing results to a secure personalized website that can be accessed by the patient, the patient’s physician and the patient’s family. Lifechart.com believes that daily reporting of test results is more effective than weekly reporting. Using daily results to monitor a patient’s progress allows doctors to adjust medication accordingly and to try to predict what triggers asthma attacks, before an emergency room visit becomes necessary.
Lifechart.com plans to expand its services to sufferers of other chronic illnesses. Soon the company will allow diabetics to upload their blood glucose test results, and make them available to patients and doctors.
RXVP offers a system of one-way communication to remind patients to take their medication. Chronic patients appreciate the simplicity of the RXVP PostScript Service, which acts as an intermediary between the doctor and the patient. The doctor gives a patient’s medication information to RXVP, and the service alerts the person every time he or she needs to take medication. The beeper system also contacts the patient’s family members when the patient has complied with the reminder.
The Health Buddy Appliance offered by the Health Hero Network Online Service bridges the gap between health care providers and patients who require chronic care. Patients are equipped with an electronic device that allows for two-way communication between them and their health care providers. By plugging a hand-held device into a regular phone line, patients can establish a dialogue with their physicians. The online service poses questions to patients daily in order to ascertain their state of health, and flags troubling answers for review by a case manager. Medical providers use proprietary software to send out reminders and tips to groups of patients, and query them each morning about the state of their health. The device is designed with non-technical users in mind; there are only four buttons on the Health Buddy that can be used to answer a doctor’s questions.
The Health Hero Network Online Service’s clients are health plans who are interested in cutting the ballooning costs of emergency room care and frequent doctor visits. A study done by the University of Buffalo showed that patients with “assistive technologies” in their homes spend less money on hospitalizations and in-home nursing care. Health plans are aware of these figures, and are open to new ways of managing chronic care more effectively. The Health Buddy system motivates patients to take a more active interest in their health. It also allows doctors to cut down on paperwork so they may spend more time addressing patient concerns.
References:
www.healthhero.com
www.rxvp.com
www.lifechart.com
www.naplesnews.com
