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Welcome to mobihealthnews |
Mobihealthnews chronicles the mobile revolution within the healthcare sector and tracks the rise of electronic health records-–two trends that are shaping the future of how healthcare is delivered to the patient on-the-go, at home and at their place of care. We believe that both EHRs and mobile technology are already beginning to markedly change the business of healthcare, and our publications aim to define innovation and sustainable business models for mHealth and EHR providers. Of course, these aren't future technologies: wireless data networks, biosensors, connected medical devices, feature-rich mobile phones and the mHealth services and applications these technologies enable are all in the market today, saving hospitals money and providing better care for patients.
The deluge of mHealth services, however, is just around the corner. Mobihealthnews is here to make sure you get the first peek.
Brian Dolan, Publisher & Editor-in-Chief | www.mobihealthnews.com | brian.dolan@mobihealthnews.com
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Google Health Mobile on Android, iPhone soon? |
The big mHealth news out of TEPR+ after Day 1 of mHealth programming: Google Health's integrated partner Anvita, formerly SafeMed, has developed a Mobile Viewer for Google Health that is built on Google's Android mobile platform. Roni Zeiger, project manager of Google Health invited Anvita Health's Co-Founder and Chief Medical Officer Ahmed Ghouri to demonstrate the new Google Health mobile app.
Currently, Anvita Health's Mobile Viewer for Google Health is only available for T-Mobile USA's G1 handset, since that is the only Android-powered mobile phone in the market today. Anvita said the application will be available on other handsets, including the iPhone, in the future. The Mobile Viewer allows users already signed up to Google Health to view their profile data from their G1 allowing for real-time and on-demand viewing of their medical records. The Mobile Viewer allows users to access profile information, including height, weight, age, current prescriptions, any existing health conditions, previous procedures, known allergies and more but does not allow users to edit that information from the phone.
Kaiser to rollout txt msg appointment reminders |
At the TEPR conference this week, Kaiser Permanente's Manager of Solution Consulting Nardo Manaloto outlined best practices for using text messages to send appointment reminders to patients. Manaloto recently completed a successful trial of such reminders at one of Kaiser's clinics. KP teamed up with text messaging application service provider Mobilestorm to handle the delivery of the text message reminders.
During the one-month pilot, Kaiser gave Mobilestorm 87,950 cell phone numbers from Kaiser's database of patients. Of those, many phone numbers were either not cell phone numbers or invalid altogether. As a result, Mobilestorm ended up sending 32,864 messages total. At the end of the pilot, Kaiser lost 1.8 percent of their user group, which opted out, or asked not to receive future text reminders. Manaloto also noted that overall, the program showed an improvement of 0.73 percent fewer "no shows" for appointments or 1,837 fewer "no shows".
Kaiser Permanente's CIO was impressed enough to greenlight the program as an upcoming national initiative, Manaloto said. Given some of the lessons learned and stated "failures" from the pilot, Manaloto admitted Kaiser was going back to square one to pick a new vendor partner. A national, commercial rollout would also include branding, sales/marketing and more complex opt-in and opt-out mechanisms, he noted. Read on for a few of the best practices and lessons learned from Kaiser Permanente's text message-based appointment reminder program:
Microsoft: More mobile HealthVault apps coming |
During a discussion of personal health records (PHRs) at TEPR+, James Mault, MD, director of new products and business development for Microsoft's Health Solutions Group stated numerous times that HealthVault and Google Health are not competitors–both services are fighting non-consumption of personal health records. While the quip is perhaps true given that PHR adoption rates are still in the low single digits, Mault also indicated he has a fundamentally different conception of what HealthVault is vs., perhaps, Google Health.
"There are a lot of misconceptions about HealthVault," Mault said. "It is a platform. It is not a personal health record. It's a data repository on which thousands of developers are building applications and services right now."
Microsoft's HealthVault serves as the platform on which at least one mobile PHR is already built: AllOne Mobile. Mault, however, said AllOne Mobile is just the beginning of mobile applications and services built on the HealthVault platform.
"You are going to see a number of mobile applications going live on this platform in the coming weeks and months," Mault announced. Following the session I asked Mault whether he and the HealthVault team have approached Microsoft's Windows Mobile team to get the mobile developers in-house thinking about leveraging this platform, too. Mault's response: You bet.
MoHCA, C-PAHC now the mHealth Initiative (mHI) |
The Medical Records Institute (MRI) announced this week the formation of a new non-profit, The mHealth Initiative (mHI), which is open to vendors, groups and individuals focused on the latest information and health application through mobile devices. MRI CEO Peter Waegemann and MRI Vice President Claudia Tessier announced the new initiative on the pre-conference day to the MRI's Towards the Electronic Patient Record (TEPR) conference in Palm Springs, CA.
"mHealth applications will save money, improve the quality of care and provide greater efficiency," said Tessier, a former executive director of the Mobile Health Care Alliance (MoHCA), who will now lead the mHI. "The mHealth Initiative will show the healthcare industry how this is possible," Tessier said. "Through mHI, we will create a roadmap for the new health ecosystem based on mDevices, new software, new interoperability solutions and secure wireless transmission."
WellDoc's diabetes app brings 2% A1c drop |
At the TEPR+ conference this week WellDoc's Vice President of Healthcare Integration Malinda Peeples outlined the company's ongoing pilot of a mobile phone-based diabetes monitoring system, that is partially funded by LifeScan and Sprint. Peeples noted the opportunities for mHealth in endocrinology and diabetes in particular by pointing to the 21 million Americans currently living with diabetes, the 54 million "pre-diabetic" Americans and the estimate that one out of every three people born in the U.S. after 2000 will develop diabetes. With a mere 2,500 practicing diabetologists in the U.S., Peeples predicted that traditional care will fail to support all of these patients and a disruptive, paradigm-shifting mobile solution will be more effective.
WellDoc's mHealth diabetes solution, Virtual Coach, currently works on five different handsets but will expand to more than 150 phones by mid-year. The service has both a mobile phone interface as well as a patient portal accessible from the patients PC and a clinician's portal for the caregiver to access remotely as well.
Read on for more on WellDoc's three month pilot...
New billing codes for cardiac telemetry, Cardionet |
In case there were any doubters that mHealth is here to stay, one of the flagship mHealth applications in the market today, cardiac telemetry devices-like Cardionet's–have officially been recognized in 2009 with their own billing code. The Cardiology Billing Blog warns billing departments that are not properly implementing the new billing and coding changes could end up losing money from lower collections and/or spending more time dealing with accounts receivable. According to the publication, the addition of cardiac telemetry devices to the billing establishment comes amidst a wave of changes that mark the most significant update to cardiology billing since the mid 1990s. Read on for a sample run-down of some of the changes:
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