People suffering from asthma, diabetes and high blood pressure simply enter details of their condition and treatment into standard mobile handsets that have been programmed with special software.

The data is automatically sent to hospital database where it is analysed by a nurse who decides whether any action needs to be taken.

Studies have shown that the system helps catch complications before they get out of control, without burdening patients with regular visits to their GP.

It also reduces hospital admissions for long-term patients by up to 90 per cent, potentially saving the NHS millions of pounds per year. (More)

Thanks to ICMCC.

I think one of the areas we have expanded into earlier then we thought was in the payer/health plan space. Payers are looking at PatientsLikeMe as a lighter-weight disease management platform. A peer-based DM, sort of like an online version of AA (the most successful peer-based DM program around) . . .

The discussions we are having is around offering PatientsLikeMe as a service to their (health plan) members – we have seen some strong anecdotal evidence that patients are using healthcare more efficiently by learning from other patients experiences and data.

We think that using our site makes patients more compliant – we are working on several pilots to prove this out. . .

Our business model is really about engaging industry into these communities – so one consideration as we look at new diseases is for whom this will help make better products. First and foremost, we need to make communities that help patients – so that is always our first consideration. . .

We get a lot of amazing feedback from out users from… depression patients who say using the site keeps them out of the hospital to a patient in MS that said that the site saved her life as her doc over-prescribed one of her medication. . .

I’ve been hiking in Yosemite National Park as well as Sequoia National Park for the last week. Being here forces you to go cold turkey when it comes to online communications. So it’s a good detox site for us net junkies. Just avoid the rock slides and all. But right now I’m in San Francisco – internet Mecca – and am looking forward to participating in the Institute for the Future’s Health Horizons Fall Conference on Reinventing Health Care in a Mobile World starting Tuesday October 14 at the Fairmont Hotel. No rock slides there I hope.

I cannot imagine my post-graduate daily activities without the tools of web 2.0. With RSS feed, I can keep myself up-to-date in my field of interest (personalized genetics) easily. By reading blog carnivals (such as Gene Genie), I’m sure I’ll know about all the important news and announcements of genetics. As I use medical community sites (e.g. Tiromed.com), it’s quite easy to find residency places or international collaborators for my research projects. And many more examples prove, at least for me, the real power of web 2.0. More. . .

(Thanks to ICMCC, DiagnosisPR and ScienceRoll)

While I’m there I’ll also do some blogging on the emerging issues as the mood strikes.

Image via Wikipedia

A new study, authored by Arthur L. Wilmes, FSA, MAAA, principal & actuary at Milliman, estimated the impact of online care by developing individual actuarial cost models for a commercial and Medicare population from internal Milliman data sources. And here’s the money quote from the Government Technology website report:

The majority of savings estimated in Milliman’s analysis came from the potential for substitution of non-emergent ER visits and in-person visits (both acute and follow-up) with lower-cost live interactions using an online care platform. The savings for the commercial population amounted to 9.2 percent for the services analyzed, representing an estimated 1.2 percent reduction in overall medical costs. For Medicare, the savings amounted to 12.1 percent for the services analyzed, equivalent to an estimated 1.2 percent of overall medical costs. Milliman also identified other potential clinical applications of online care with cost savings potential, including chronic patient management, early disease detection and care management.

(Thanks to ICMCC)

Image via Wikipedia

From Karen Bell, Director of the Office of Health IT Adoption at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services:

We still lack a compelling business case in terms of purchasing, upkeep, and decreased productivity. Physicians have to shell out considerable upfront costs and lose about 20 percent productivity in the first few months as personnel get used to the system. And the average primary-care physician doesn’t have time to research different systems and learn how to use them: every minute they are not seeing patients, they are not getting paid.

(Thanks to Technology Review)

The current understanding of a PHR is of an online repository of all of the information in your medical record—and that is way too limiting. We want to stretch the vision so that technology designers and policy-makers see PHRs as resources that don’t just allow patients to review their medical information, but instead enable them to make more informed decisions because of it.

Thanks to Digital HealthCare and ICMCC.

Similar technologies which decentralize care typically commoditize expertise and bring care closer to the patient. If we can encourage business models that fully capitalize on the advantages of these decentralizing technologies we will dramatically increase the value delivered by the health care system.

Other questioners ask:

“Given your view on decreasing reliance on hospitals and physicians, how do you think the practice of surgery will be affected.?”

Patients are not going to be doing surgery on themselves, nor are non-surgeons going to be doing anything beyond biopses. However, for diseases which have causes the can be targeted with medications or devices the need for surgery can be precluded and disrupted.

“So with that response, how do you foresee Google and Microsoft’s initiatives playing out?”

The problem with Google and Microsoft initiatives is they maintain control for the data in that the data is still seen as the primary source of value. This is no different from how hospital systems already view their data. We would prefer to see a system that commodotizes data warehousing and in which profits shift to the companies that develop innovative applications through which to use that data.

“Can you give an example of truly disruptive technology that you see coming?”

The technology is already here but the importance is on how we employ it. Technologies can be utilized in a disruptive or sustaining fashion . . . Technologies help providers deliver more and more complex care. But that tends to increase overall cost of the system. That very same technology could be employed in a disruptive manner and a prime example today is telemedicine.

“EMR adoption is anemic. Will rising consumerism in health care prompt a rise in adoption?”

My view is that EMR (implementation by hospital systems and physicians) will likely remain stagnant. PHRs under the control of patients should disrupt the information and data infrastructure provided that we give patients a reason to collect and manage their own health care data.

On telemedicine:

Again there are two ways in which we can implement telemedicine. One way is we use technology to help our specialists see more patients more efficiently than they could in the past. However, the second way in which we use telemedicine is to help support less expensive caregiver and technicians to care for those very same patients is what will be disruptive to the system. If Web 2.0 technologies are used to help patients take better care of themselves thereby reducing the need to utilize costly expertise and expensive facilities, then that would truly be disruptive. I believe this can happen.

On electronic personal health records:

For disruptive innovation to get any traction we must identify areas of non-consumption. So in the united states there are a lot of affiliated health companies that have no access to the existing records database. I imagine that companies like spas, fitness centers, nutrition stores and wellness centers would be an ideal market in which to establish a disruptive PHR system. Eventually, traditional health care providers will see value in linking their system to the newer disruptive one.

On my question about virtual home visits:

For a growing number of conditions virtual home visits are more than adequate. In order to encourage adoption once again we need changes in our payment model. As I said before, we would suspect that these types of innovations would arise first from the integrated delivery systems that are able to capture the value gained by new delivery models such as this one.

There are currently about 3.2 billion mobile subscribers in the world, and that number is expected to grow by at least a billion in the next few years. Today, mobile phones are more prevalent than cars (about 800 million registered vehicles in the world) and credit cards (only 1.4 billion of those). While it took 100 years for landline phones to spread to more than 80% of the countries in the world, their wireless descendants did it in 16. And fewer teens are wearing watches now because they use their phones to tell time instead (somewhere Chester Gould is wondering how he got it backwards). So it’s safe to say that the mobile phone may be the most prolific consumer product ever invented. (more)

How in health care do we tap the power on mobile devices featured in this pre-android deployment post on the future of mobile phones – smart alerts, augmented reality, mainstream crowd-sourcing, remote sensoring, development tool, and – I love this – trusted valet?

Trust is the most important currency in the always connected world, and your phone will help you stay in control of your information. You may choose to share nothing at all (the default mode), or just share certain things with certain people — your circle of trusted friends and family. You’ll make these decisions based on information you get from the service and software providers, and the collective ratings of the community as well. Your phone is like your trusted valet: it knows a lot about you, and won’t disclose an iota of it without your OK.

I hope it can help us know our health as well.