Reason #10 (countdown)

Patient Support

There is no question that patient support is critical in improving the health outcomes and promoting healthy behavior change in patients with chronic diseases. Chronic diseases put extraordinary pressure on the healthcare system with annual cost for diabetes at $174 billion/year and heart disease/stroke at $432 billion/year. Patients with chronic diseases have fewer options, receive lower quality care and face sharp increases in health care cost.

The patient support network can be made up of a family health manager (FHM), which is a family member that takes charge of the family’s health. It could come from the patient’s health care professional (HCP), or a certified diabetes educator (CDE).  But how do you connect all of the patient supports into a network that works seamlessly? Smartphones can play a major part of creating an effective patient support network and instilling behavior change. Lets look at how a diabetes application can improve health outcomes though a patient support network.

The FHM, HCP, and CDE are connected into the diabetes application though a customized set of business rules. One set of rules can be as simple a reminder from the application to the patients via SMS notifying the user (lets call him Joe) did not log an entry for their daily dosage of medication. If this this reminder goes unanswered than the application can elevate the situation to an alert to the FHM. The FHM will receive a SMS, Email, or a pre recorded voice mail alerting them that Joe did not record their medication. The FHM can than reach out to Joe and ask him if he forgot to take his medication or if he just forgot to record it into his diabetes application. Business rules can also be in place that trigger notifications to Joe’s health care provider, which informs the provider that the patient has not taken their medication for several days or the patient can receive coaching, educational information, and health videos from his CDE.

Now we have recorded the information about Joe’s health behavior, what can we do with it? At Joe’s next doctors appointment his health provider can access the information though a secure web portal and have data driven conversation with dashboards, charts and key indicators about the Joe’s behavior and health. The data recorded provides greater insights and accuracy about Joe’s health and behavior. The health provider can a create care plan that fits the needs of Joe to encourage better health outcomes.

Next blog entry:

Mobile application connected to a multimodal world