Thanks to Bill Coleman for sending me a great article from the New York Times on Zume’s the Zuri and other up and coming telehealth tools. The Zuri is a small handheld device that prompts users to take their pills on schedule and to keep track of health-related matters like diet and exercise.

The Zuri reminded me of the recent Lakewood Telemedicine update. They took are looking an implementing tools that will help monitor medical issues for patients and will allow monitoring to be accessed remotely – so a parent could check up on a kid at college or a kid could check up on an elderly parent. Or some days I must admit I’d like to check up to see how I’m doing!

The NY Times article pointed out that one beauty of the handheld device is that you can track symptoms or get reminders as you carry on with your day. The Times also mentioned a range of other services similar in one way or another to the Zuri – such as Google Health.

I can’t remember if I wrote about Google Health here but I looked into it this summer. Google has set up personal health portals. I would love to be able to print out shot records for the kids’ schools. (OK I guess that means I’d have to type it into the system, which isn’t going to happen.) It would be nice to see these tools take it a step forward where not only could you give the doctor access to you – but where you could get access to them or at least to your official health care records – for things like shot records.

Take that a step forward where these records can be shared all over the world – and it makes it easier for people to move from country to country. To borrow an image from Thomas Friedman, it makes use even flatter.

In my quest for the killer app – this is a definite contender!

Not a contender but a fun and semi-related application – Minnesota-based General Mills just created a series of video podcasts on healthy cereal. It’s a great way to impart health-related news. But even more than that it’s a great way for them to disseminate infomercials to partner (and other) sites. They have made it easy to embed the videos into your site – helping to boost the viral impact of the video. Here’s a sample and here’s a kind of helpful (not really) press release on the series.

Happy Summer!  A couple of weeks ago, I announced that we had completed a purchase agreement with Honeywell HomMed.  We are excited to announce that the equipment for our telemedicine project is finally here!  It felt like Christmas opening the boxes and realizing the potential that each piece of equipment has to make a difference in the lives of our clients.  I have been in contact with our designated trainer from Honeywell HomMed.  Our training dates have been set for August 5th- strategic planning and August 26-27th – all-staff training.  The all-staff training will include the set up of the secure website where every piece of communicated information from the client’s monitoring unit is held, the actual equipment set up (Blood pressure cuff, scale, oximeter, video phones, and recording unit), along with a number of equipment set-ups in our clients’ homes.  We will be working on identifying the clients who would benefit most from a telemonitoring unit.   

A number of factors will go into identifying clients who would benefit; a couple of examples being the risk for hospitalization and the client’s ability to learn how to use the equipment.  While the equipment is not complicated, a client with severe memory problems or severe illness may not be appropriate. 

Again, we are grateful to the Blandin Foundation for helping us to obtain the tools to provide better care to our clients! 

The Blandin Foundation is supporting four standout broadband programs through the Light Speed program. The program’s purpose is to stimulate the deployment of bandwidth intensive applications that connect local institutions to area resident’s home. This post comes from a Light Speed community leader.

We continue to research our telemonitoring purchase options. Last week, we had a representative from Patient Care Technologies demonstrate their well@home device.  The well@home model is unique in that it interfaces with Patient Care Technologies’ current Home Health software.  Our home health agency purchased this software a number of years ago.  This would mean our nurses would not have to re-enter the client’s telemonitoring statistics into the client’s online chart.  It would directly interface the information each time the client completed their vital signs, answered questions related to their health condition, or did not complete their tasks.  The newest well@home monitor includes the capability to obtain a 1-lead ECG- something that we have not seen in other telemonitoring products.  On their website: http://www.wellathome.com/ they include an interview with a well@home user from Minnesota. 

In Patient Care Technologies’ own one year study of CHF patients, patients who utilized well@home showed a 37% improvement in the management of their oral medications, 19% reported improved dyspnea, along with a 45% reduced ER care visit rate and 47% rate of decreased acute care hospitalization.  As we look for Medicare to begin the “pay for performance” standards for home care agencies, we are looking to improve our care and utilize more evidence-based process measures, like telemonitoring. 

Our last telemedicine demonstration is scheduled for May 1st from a company called Viterion. 

The Blandin Foundation is supporting four standout broadband programs through the Light Speed program. The program’s purpose is to stimulate the deployment of bandwidth intensive applications that connect local institutions to area resident’s home. This post comes from a Light Speed community leader.