Smarter Healthcare
To build a smarter system, healthcare solutions need to be instrumented, interconnected and intelligent
The Japanese are watching their waistlines—and so is their government
A new law now requires citizens between the ages of 40 and 74 to measure their midsections during annual checkups. Diet recommendations and further weight-loss education await those whose girth exceeds established limits.
Whether this regulation is seen as "big brother" medicine or simply a more proactive wellness strategy, it is a sign of things to come: the world's healthcare solutions need to change. Using tools like electronic medical records, wireless computing devices and health support networks, healthcare can be smarter.
In fact, much of smarter healthcare is not focused on the next big breakthrough in medical research. Smarter healthcare solutions start with the individual. Take the Medical Home model, for example. Primary care physicians act as "coaches," leading a team that manages a patient's wellness, preventive and chronic care needs. The doctor spends more time with each person, is available via e-mail and phone for consultation, offers expanded hours and coordinates care across the individual's entire care team.
Nearly 900,000 Canadians regularly access home care, and the numbers are growing. From 1995 and 2002, the number of those receiving home care increased by more than 60%.
The Victorian Order of Nurses (VON) is Canada's largest, national, not-for-profit home and community care organization. IBM will provide VON with new business processes and clinical technologies, including mobile wireless hand-held devices. The system will help hundreds of home healthcare providers:
- Schedule patient appointments
- Collect, share and access patient information in real-time
- Access human resources and benefits administration; and
- Automate finance and accounting processes
This transformational initiative will enable VON's 52 locations across Canada to be more integrated and cost-efficient, thereby improving community services and patient care.
For more than a decade, Google has been a worldwide healthcare information resource. Now Google, IBM and Continua Health Alliance have partnered to allow individuals to create personal health profiles—capturing information about medical conditions, allergies and illnesses.
The partnership even lets users import records and prescription histories from hospitals, labs and pharmacies. For example:
- A busy mom can receive daily electronic updates on the health status of an aging parent who lives alone, is suffering from high blood pressure, and is on multiple medications.
- A traveling businessperson, who is diabetic and training for a marathon, can have a real-time discussion about her blood sugar levels and heart rate with her coach hundreds of miles away.
What else might we expect from a smarter healthcare system?
Information isn't stranded on islands
Smarter healthcare is interconnected. Like Spain's Servicio Extremeño de Salud (SES), where each location had its own patient records system. The organization took steps to create a global platform, connecting almost 13,000 professionals with a scheduling system that manages nine million outpatient visits a year.
Physicians spend time with patients, not paperwork
Geisinger Health System serves more than two million Pennsylvanians. The enterprise was one of the first healthcare organizations in the US to implement an electronic health record (EHR). This massive storehouse of clinical information, procedure and research enables extensive, diverse medical information to be used as the basis for medical research, treatments and life-saving breakthroughs.
Expertise needs no passport
Smarter healthcare doesn't stop at geographic borders. For example, the island of Tristan da Cunha. It's located more than 1,665 miles west of Cape Town, South Africa, and is accessible only by a week-long boat trip. But that doesn't mean its residents can't have access to high-tech medical care. "Project Tristan" combines medical equipment, satellite communications and remotely supported electronic health record (EHR) technology, allowing medical experts from anywhere in the world to assist island clinicians in their daily practices with medical diagnoses and emergency
What is a PHR and what is an EHR?
These two acronyms will see a lot of airtime in the next several years. But what do they mean?
PHR The personal health record (PHR) is an electronic, universally available, lifelong resource of health information used by individuals to make health decisions. People own and manage their information in the PHR, which comes from healthcare providers and the individual. The PHR is maintained in a secure and private environment, with the individual determining rights of access. The PHR is separate from and does not replace the legal record of any provider.
EHR An electronic health record (EHR) refers to an individual's medical record in digital format. Electronic health record systems coordinate the storage and retrieval of individual records with the aid of computers. An EHR is usually accessed on a computer, often over a network. It may be made up of electronic medical records (EMRs) from many locations and/or sources. Among the many forms of data often included in EMRs are patient demographics, medical history, medicine and allergy lists (including immunization status), laboratory test results, radiology images, billing records and advanced directives.
The primary distinction between a PHR and an EHR is that the individual controls information in the PHR, while the doctor or hospital—or both—controls information in the EHR./p>