JenAssociates offer consumers access to large medical databases for patients who want to know what treatments have been used by people “like them.” This consumer portal allows individuals to access health data to inform their decisions about their own treatment options. By entering a few pieces of data they can learn about rates of hospitalization, length of stay, preferred treatment choices, and cost-sharing for individuals who match the profile. In this way they can use information from patients who preceded them to help them make decisions about their future. (The company also offers one of the most sophisticated databases for those in the medical industry.)
Safe Synching of All Your Medications
Surely, syncing all drugs a person uses in one place and seeing side effects and interactions at a glance will be information for all involved.
KnowMyMed’s supports team-based medication management and medication reconciliation for hig-risk people and provides automated medication reconciliation and clearly identifies risks that may not have been visible before.
Patient Engagement Software: Huge Savings for Institutions
For institutions, poor patient engagement has been estimated to cost over $290 billion dollars a year. Lack of engagement is an avoidable healthcare cost, and closing this gap is one of the single biggest opportunities engagement software can help reduce the cost of care.
Doctors Flocking to Apps
St. Joseph Health System’s SJH Pulse mobile app for medical news notes that half of all physicians will use medical apps in the next 12 months (now at 38%). Almost one-third of providers use their smartphones or tablets to access electronic health records. Twenty-five percent of health care providers surveyed use tablets at their practice.
Goodbye Paper Charts
NextGen allows doctors to eliminate paper charts, providing instead customizable content that allows physicians to work as their particular practice and personal preference warrants, all simplifying administration, lost charts, and more.
Mobile
With the acceptance of electronic health records, mobile healthcare technology is the logical next step. NextGen and others offer medical personnel with information they need on their phone or tablet. Benefits include patient research, documentation of calls; tracking schedules; prescribing, renewing refill requests; being aware of patient allergies; viewing x-rays and other images; ordering lab results; tracking procedures, and more.
Analytic Tools
Jen Associates is offering Big Data in a system that helps medical personnel select and analyze data in seconds. They can target by disability, symptom, or other variables.
Time Savers
Then there is the NextPen. In the moment that the pen writes or draws on the form, the information becomes structured data and the function of the paper is complete. In the past, the form was the record. Now the form has become a temporary, yet very intuitive data entry device and the pen has become the data capture device, much like a keyboard on a computer.
A tiny camera in the pen’s tip interprets the pen’s position on the form, capturing everything the patient or provider writes or draws, and turning handwritten forms into structured data elements that become part of a patient’s electronic health record.
Last But Not Least: Talking Digital Pets
The GeriJoy company has produced talking digital pets as companions for the elderly. GeriJoy members can ask their companion questions at any time. If they want to know what activities are being held today, they can ask their companion and it will tell them. Live people look up the answers and respond appropriately. This information can be presented in spoken or picture form. No typing needed.
Naturally, there is a dark side to massive EHR compilation, one that makes Big Brother look like child’s play, and perhaps not enough people are looking at the unintended consequences of easy access to massive numbers of electronic health records. If you are late paying medical bills, all institutions will know and may discriminate against you. As you can see by perusing the vendors at Digital Health Conference site, however, it appears as if the good is going to far outweigh the potential concerns; we can assume ethical oversight will be in place with so much personal data being parsed, sorted and analyzed.
The Digital Health Conference was presented by the New York eHealth Collaborative (NYeC). NYeC works to educate the healthcare industry and those in need of treatment, with a goal of elevating the level of general understanding as to how health IT can improve care.
Courtesy of The Wellness Wire
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