Article on EHC from the American News Srevice..
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Device Lets Patients Get Medical Checkups Over Internet
By the American News Service
BOYNTON BEACH, Fla. -- For the housebound elderly and chronically ill person, a new device allows doctors and other caregivers to talk with their patients at home on two-way interactive television via the Internet and take readings like weight, blood pressure, pulse, temperature and blood glucose levels.
The Electronic House Call System is a large television-like device with a touch-screen display. It is designed to monitor, educate and coach patients to become their own caregivers while still linking them to health professionals 24 hours a day. The device, developed jointly by CYBeR-Care, Georgia Tech, the Medical College of Georgia and the U.S. Army, has been used in clinical trials at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Fla., for the past four years and will be commercially available to insurance companies this summer.
To activate the system, the patient touches an icon on the monitor and is put in direct TV contact with a nurse. The nurse then instructs the patient how to use the built-in medical attachments that feed medical information back to the caregiver. The system has eight ports for input from peripherals like an electronic scale, thermometer, blood pressure monitor and blood analysis unit.
The Electronic House Call System can also put the patient in contact with support groups and other people who are dealing with similar problems, such as asthma, diabetes and heart conditions.
The goal is to target the 1 percent of the population that consumes 35 percent of the health care costs, said John Haines, president and chief executive officer of CYBeR-Care, Inc., which manufactures and markets the device to insurance companies. Such people tend to use the health care system frequently by calling 911 and seek hospital care three to four times a year. While the system is not meant to monitor an emergency situation, it is meant to catch problems in their earliest stages before they become life threatening.
"In the past, the HMOs have not had any tools to solve this problem," said Haines. "HMOs have been getting flack because they are limiting patient access (to care). But these patients will access care in the most costly way by ending up in the emergency room. This (system) is a good way for these patients to access more care but keep costs down."
The designers estimate that by reducing doctor and hospital visits, the Electronic House Call system could cut HMO, private insurance, Medicare and Medicaid costs by 30 to 50 percent, or an average $52,000 to $70,000 per patient annually.
Besides the positive medical benefits of continuously monitoring chronically ill patients, Haines said, in the clinical trials many patients had access to a social network that was previously unavailable to them. "Many of these people are lonely. We connect them with others who have the same condition who meet on-line two or three times a week. They share war stories about their illness, and make friends." |
