How effective is mHealth In Treating the Elderly?

With more and more people accessing internet on their mobile devices, mobile health (mHealth) has emerged as a popular sub-segment of eHealth. The term mHealth is being used to refer the practice of medicine and public health supported by smartphones, tablets, phablets and mobile-enabled diagnostic devices. In addition to gathering clinical and community health data from various sources, the mHealth applications further enable the patients, clinicians, researchers and caregivers to access both healthcare information and health related services through their mobile devices. Many organizations, nowadays, invest in mHealth application development to improve and expand healthcare services, while reducing costs of care. A number of reports have also highlighted how mHealth applications can contribute hugely towards treating the elders more effectively.

Why mHealth Applications are Effective in Treating the Older Adults?

Chronic Disease Management

The cost of healthcare is hugely impacted by chronic diseases. As a person ages, his burden of chronic diseases grows. Further, the prevalence of multiple chronic conditions is much higher among older adults. The multiple chronic conditions also make the health care needs complex and expensive. For instance, an elder must avail effective care immediately to avoid frequent hospitalization, duplicative tests, adverse drug events and conflicting medical advices. The mHealth application will allow the elderly patients to support and manage their personal health efficiently by accessing the required health information and care.

Medication Adherence
Along with facilitating chronic disease management, the mHealth application will further help the older adults to adhere to the relevant medication. As poor medical adherence affects the individuals and community negatively, each patient must adhere to the recommendations made by the healthcare provider. However, the medical adherence of a patient can be affected negatively by a number of factors including understanding the instructions, forgetting to take medication and remembering the medication-taking instructions. The mHealth applications make it easier for the older adults to understand and remember the medication regime. Further, they can receive regular notifications to obtain proper medication information on a regular basis.

Safety Monitoring
Many reports have highlighted that hip fractures, falls and similar injuries contribute hugely towards the death and disability of the older adults. So the mHealth applications come with special features to prevent injuries and promote safety among the elderly people. These features make it easier for the healthcare providers to monitor the patient in terms of his location, balance and gait. As most mobile devices support GPS tracking and accelerometers, the applications use fall detection technology to identify the location and nature of the fall, along with notifying others about the fall by sending alerts.

Access to Health Information
As the mHealth application specifically target mobile devices, it becomes easier for the user to access, share and coordinate his personal health information. In addition to facilitating communication and interaction between the elderly and the healthcare provider, the application further helps the older adult in improving self-management. At the same time, the user can further use the application to access his personal health records (PHRs). So he can constantly track his important health records, along with tracking his healthcare services. Most healthcare providers, nowadays, allow patients to control the PHR and share the information with others. Thus, it becomes easier for the elderly people to share crucial information like allergies, drug interactions and medication along with the narrative of their immunizations and diagnoses.

Facilitate General Wellness
The mHealth applications even contribute towards facilitating general wellness of older adults without any chronic conditions. The general wellness facilitated by the applications, however, can be divided into several categories including nutrition, fitness and overall quality of life. For instance, a user can use the mHealth application to access information related to weight loss, healthy eating, smoking cessation, exercise and yoga. He also has option to use different applications to facilitate fitness nutrition and quality of life. So each older adult can download the application according to his mobile device and operating system, and avail the benefits in a flexible way.

The older adults also have option to choose from a variety of mHealth applications according to their specific healthcare needs. So it becomes easier for a user to avail personalized and prompt care simply by using his mobile device, regardless of his current location.

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What Impedes Ubiquitous Adoption of Health IT?

Many reports have highlighted how a clinic can avail several benefits by adopting personal health record (PHR) systems. The electronic health records (EHRs) will provide a secure and private environment to patients to access, update and share their health information. At the same time, the systems will further make it easier for physicians to instantly access information about a patient’s health and medical history. Thus, they can provide more manage a patient’s record more efficiently, while reducing the chances of medical orders. However, there are several barriers that affect the ubiquitous adoption of health IT in a negative way.

7 Barriers that Affect the Ubiquitous Adoption of Health IT Systems

1) Required Training: A physician can avail many benefits by adopting health IT systems. But he needs to put some amount of time and effort to become familiar with the system, and implement it properly. At the same time, the physician must train his colleagues and staff about the features and capabilities of the system. But many physicians lack time to become familiar with an EHR system and avail all its features.

2) Initial Investment: Each clinic has to invest some amount of funds to create and support its own IT structure. However, it also has option to avail the health IT services from external vendors. The initial cost will include the expensed related to purchase, coordination, monitoring, upgrading and governance. The small and medium sized clinics often do not have adequate IT budgets. So the cost of IT health system adoption also impacts its ubiquitous adoption.

3) Level of Compute Skills Needed: Many physicians even find it difficult to use PHR systems in real time. Many system providers also develop complex systems to complement the varying needs of individual clinics. So along with the physician, his colleagues also need to possess the computer and typing skills required to listen to a patient’s complains, assess its medical relevancy, and type the details at a time. Also, the staff must be familiar with the EHR application interface to simultaneously perform several activities.

4) Cluttered and Restricted Workspaces: A clinic also requires adequate space and infrastructure to accommodate the computers. As the staff has to type the information while listening to the patient, it becomes essential to place the computer in private rooms. Further, the clinic has to decide the most appropriate location to place the server and other system. On the whole, the cluttered workspace and insufficient physical space can also affect the health IT adoption rate.

5) Complexity of the System: Each physician wants to pick an EHR system that complements its needs over a longer period of time. That is why; often physicians opt for complex systems that provide multiple screens and navigation options. The complex features, however, require physicians to learn the system completely to take notes while listening to a patient’s complains. But a number of surveys have highlighted that the physicians find it a daunting challenge to operate the HER system without disrupting the clinical encounter. Many physicians even stop using the system to optimize the clinical encounter.

6) Technical Support: Each clinic requires technical support to create and maintain an IT infrastructure. So it expects the vendor to provide constant support the initial days, and afterward. The support staff also needs to be helpful and knowledgeable enough to provide the required support without causing any delay. However, many physicians feel that the support staffs deployed by the vendors are not available 24 hours a day. The lack of technical support during holidays and off-hours also affects the health IT adoption rate.

7) Problem with Health IT Vendors: The lack of adequate training and technical support for external vendors also contribute towards ubiquitous adoption of health IT. Many physicians hesitate to adopt EHR systems due to the quality of EHR system vendors. As the products are relatively new in the marketplace, physicians often feel that they will incur losses by choosing systems provided by unreliable companies. The unreliable vendors will not further provide the service and support required to avail the benefits of EHR system in the longer run. So the vendors must take several initiatives to win the trust of clients, and encourage them to invest in health IT solutions.

The health IT system providers must address these issues to encourage more and more clinics to adopt health IT systems. At the same time, they must build web-based PHR systems to overcome the factors that divide health IT adoption.

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Will Mobile Technology End Healthcare Disparities?

The introduction of mobile technology has brought in revolutionary changes in every realm of our lives. How can health care be left behind? Indeed, this new technology resulted in various innovations that have decreased and in some cases, even ended a lot of disparities that have previously plagued this particular industry.

Statistics have categorically pinpointed that with the advent of mobile technology, access to various types of health care services have vastly improved. Besides, the cost involved has decreased substantially though there are still a lot of things that can be done to fully utilize this technology for bringing various health care disparities.

Introduction of this particular type of knowhow already has benefited the rural as well as underserved populations of various countries, especially the developing ones. Thanks to this knowledge, this particular sect of the population can now have access to urban specialists in case of a medical emergency at any time of day or night and this helps immensely in saving life. Moreover, this know how is further likely to reduce inefficiencies as well as errors in prescribing drugs and conduction of various medical tests.

Thus, medical practitioners get immense help, especially while remotely monitoring patients who are suffering from different types of chronic illnesses. The know-how also helps them to remind their patients of appointments and taking medicines as prescribed. Thus, it can well be stated at this juncture that with the introduction of mobile technology, people access to various technologies dramatically has eased, thereby narrowing down the so called “digital divide”, which has prevailed for so many years and in years to come, it is likely to be pushed to the brink of elimination.

As people’s access to the Internet along with web-enhanced tools has expanded, governments of countries all around the world are working in sync with various communities to enhance the use of health–related IT services for improvement of overall health.

Experts who are associated with research on how mobile technology can improve the patient outcome by ending the disparities, have expressed hope that though there are miles to go, still the start is already looking a lot promising.

Increased and a systematic use of this technology has also helped the policy makers in taking better and more stable decisions regarding health care – a fact that is already helping in a drastic reduction of cost related to medical treatment. An exhilarating amount of opportunities that this technology had brought in, is improving the patient experience by controlling the costs involved.

The technology has also helped to do a lot of elaborate research and data analysis, for answering basic questions, regarding health care, thereby reducing the disparities by a significant extent. It is also likely to further increase the use of various offshore resources in order to meet the specific needs of each and every individual. This, in turn, would eliminate any disparity whatsoever that exists mainly due to the location as well as access to the specialty medical service providers.

While this particular function is illustrated by the growing popularity of the telemedicine for increasing access to the medical practitioners from the remote areas, this also demonstrates the use of some other basic tools of communication like automated video, voice call center mechanisms. These tools ensure that a particular family has timely access to expert medical interpreters at a certain hospital or medical center at the earliest at the hour or need.

Besides, social networking that the modern mobile technology has come up with provides patients and their families all the relevant information that comes in handy when it comes to dealing with emergency situations.

So this can surely be said that the rural areas, which have fewer numbers of medical personnel per capita, are being benefitted immensely from modern mobile technology. This is because it allows patients from these rural areas, to have easy as well as quick access to doctors located in the urban areas, through various high tech means like video conferencing and other types of remote monitoring technologies. This has naturally resulted in the elimination of the disparities in the medical field to a large extent.

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Major initiatives in Health IT in 2013

As the push for infusing information technology into the healthcare space continues, each year is expected to have its own share of activities and initiatives which get implemented. All of these are finally expected to synergize and lead to a highly efficient and cost effective healthcare system in the future. Each such initiative has a starting time keeping in mind the change it is expected to bring about and the contribution it would make to the system over time. Also, all such initiatives are expected to have certain gestations periods to start offering real benefits. However, the build-up years are bound to result in certain levels of uncertainty and heartburn amongst all concerned stakeholders – owing to major changes affecting the status quo at any point in time.

Year 2013 saw some such Health IT initiatives getting implemented. A few of those were in response to concerns arising on the way and a few with the foresight of where the industry wants to reach. The important wants are as follows:

The HIPAA Omnibus Rule:

As an expansion to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountable Act, four new rules have been implemented. Contractors, subcontractors and other business associates of healthcare entities who deal with patient data are now expected to protect it as otherwise a provider would. There are penalties in place as well for cases of non-compliance. Also, how patient information is to be used for marketing purposes and for raising funds have defined guidelines to follow no. In short, no patient information can be sold without the required permission in place. With the digital world in a perennial expansion mode, the new rule is expected to protect patient privacy and safeguard patient health information.

Guidance for Mobile Medical Application:
This was provided by the Food and Drug Administration after an almost 2-year wait. The guidelines are enforced only on a certain percentage of apps which pose a threat to patients if they fail to perform what they intend to. Thus, only a small subset of the overall app market falls under its purview. In its current state, the oversight is on all those mobile medical applications which are aimed at being used as accessories to regulated mobile devices or which are likely to transform mobile platforms into regulated medical devices. The agency has been very particular to apply those regulatory standards which it otherwise applies to medical devices. This clarity is also very relevant to the developer community as they build newer and more effective solutions. There were some omissions in the guidelines which include:

• definition of what are regulated i.e. how to determine what requires regulation and what necessitates enforcement discretion
• defining the levels of risk for mobile devices & their accessories
• disease intended uses compared to unregulated, wellness intended uses
• exact meaning of an accessory to a medical device

Meaningful Use Stage 2 deadline extension:
Senators may have asked for a reboot of the system, some senior leaders might have questioned its true benefits; MU is here to stay. However, there is widespread consensus on some of the issues which stand as hurdles in its implementation - with the major one concerning the timeline. As a response to this, CMS proposed Meaningful Stage 2 implementation to be extended through 2016. This will result in the roll out of stage 3 getting pushed to 2017. There has however not been a shift in the start date resulting in drawing flak from some CIOs. They are not convinced about the intent of such a move – that of allowing time for fine tuning for the next stage by extending the deadline and not bring in flexibility in the start date which seems to be the need of the hour. Effectively, it means that those providers who do not start on time will miss out on a payment cycle.

Use of Big Data:
It might be early days for big data usage in healthcare systems; providers who have started using them for their clinical and administrative work have already started noticing the benefits. From reducing mortality rates, bringing down instances of readmission to performing evidence-based budgeting, there are predictions already of saving close to $450 billion in healthcare costs if the right usage of big data is made. People from some sections of the industry are however not overtly excited in jumping to such conclusions although they acknowledge the positives which are visible.

What will be new in 2014? Healthcare testing services would be in demand. Because of the large number of initiatives being rolled out and newer changes affecting healthcare, testing would peak during the year. Certified testing team would help you stay in line with your business goals while ensuring delivery of accurate healthcare solutions.

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