Telehealth

Samsung Healthcare Senior Manager Jerry Berger says the consumer electronics maker is looking to make a mark in healthcare by offering its mobile devices and Knox software platform as the powerhouse behind its partners' solutions.

TytoCare’s connected telehealth device can improve diagnostic accuracy, according to Director of Provider Solutions Shriya Palekar.

Poor networking was hindering growth at the health system. With new tech, the clinician satisfaction rate has soared to 95% and network uptime is up to 99%.

The use of mobile and IoT devices will bring better healthcare delivery to the edge of networks as 5G becomes more prolific in the coming years, says Cradlepoint CSO Todd Kelly.

Anton Arbatov, senior director SOC Telemed, says telehealth tools can enable faster access to care and help emergency clinicians make decisions at the bedside to reduce unnecessary admissions and length of stay, thereby saving money.

"Telemedicine optimizes our practice's capabilities, and also improves our patients' outcomes," said Dr. Robert S. Kaufmann of the internal med practice.

Brazil is facing many of the problems common in other countries, notably interoperability, privacy, infrastructure, a large population and the combination of private and public health, says E-VAL Saúde Director Luis Gustavo Kiatake.

Telehealth technology has helped the Friedwald Center reduce hospital transfers for falls by 90 percent, and transfers for dementia by 83 percent, among other quality improvements.

ACT Health is rolling out Wavelink’s Spectralink Versity enterprise mobility solution across five of its facilities, including Canberra Hospital. The deal involves the roll out of 2000 of the Spectralink Versity handsets by July. Spectralink Versity is an Android smartphone, purpose-built for healthcare. It is durable, waterproof, and has secure messaging capabilities, in addition to personalised settings for each user. A higher-grade model has a barcode scanner, which enables integration into EMRs. ACT Health will be using a combination of both models. Wavelink Health Practice Lead Alan Stocker told HITNA that part of the evaluation criteria that it went through was a checklist of requirements such durability, being able to be used with medical gloves and a single sign-on for practitioners. “ACT Health is effectively ditching the utility belt, which sees healthcare professionals carrying a number of utility devices like hospital issued phones, pagers and barcode scanners. They carry around about five devices at any given time,” he said. “As it was managing a number of devices, this also meant that it had in place different maintenance contracts and multiple relationships with various vendors. And even with a number of devices, they weren’t delivering on what ACT Health wanted to do.” Spectralink Versity eliminates that as it integrates all the uses of multiple devices into one. According to Stocker, the units are designed to be used in an enterprise environment and also integrate with EMRs. “A medical practitioner doing their rounds can go up to a patient, load up their EMR app, scan the patient’s hospital wristband, which then brings up their information,” he said. “In addition, before we sell this to a hospital, we look at their wi-fi networks and make sure that it’s enterprise-grade. This means that we make sure of coverage no matter where Spectralink Versity is being used in the facility as if there’s a black spot, the healthcare professionals are not going to be receiving critical messages.” [Read more: ACT Health replaces outdated bedside whiteboards with digital bedside technology | Royal Darwin Hospital improves patient care with virtual desktop program] The devices connect to an electronic dashboard, which manages a number of functions, such as real-time staff whereabouts and rostering. Stocker said with interoperability and connected devices becoming more prevalent in other parts of the world, Australian healthcare organisations need to keep up to stay ahead of the curve. “In Australia, we haven’t quite seen the adoption of many smart devices in hospitals. We’re about five years behind to countries like the US. So, connected health is a huge part of Wavelink and we’re now driving this strategy to make healthcare easier for practitioners,” he added. Spectralink Versity has also been taken by Northern Hospital in North Melbourne, a number of aged care groups including Arcare, Shepparton Villages, TLC Aged Care and Townsville Aged Care, as well as in smaller quantities at a couple of other hospitals. The company is also running a number of proof-of-concept trials with hospitals and state health groups around the country.

Healthcare leader representatives from Singapore, Australia and the Philippines took centre stage as the HIMSS Singapore eHealth & Health 2.0 Summit officially kicked off on April 23 with the CXO Panel session on the topic of disruptive innovation for value-based care.  “Today’s healthcare model is based on ‘more is better,’ but I think the healthcare model of tomorrow ought to be when ‘better is more.’ When we look at that shift from the volume to value-driven care approach to how we are going to look after our patients, and take care of them with themselves being ‘activated’ to so, it will change the paradigm of how healthcare is interpreted and can be delivered,” explained Dr. Eugene Soh, chief executive officer, Tan Tock Seng Hospital, Singapore.  According to Dr. Soh, what value-based care means to him is the idea of how to expand value over time and space because value is delivered today in a very episodic manner and he believes the future will be a more relationship-based model. From his experience working in the Philippines, Mr. Christian Besler, chief digital officer, Ayala Healthcare, said that what value-based care means to him is threefold: bringing about affordability, accessibility and quality of healthcare to the masses, especially in a country where good quality healthcare tends to be concentrated in urban areas. The role of telehealth Dr. Stephen Chan, chief medical information officer, Woodlands Health Campus Singapore, who was also the panel moderator, posed the question on the role of telehealth in Singapore to the panel: Despite the country’s small geographical size, could telehealth be customised to the local population? Is it more than just “access” for the modern day consumer?  Dr. Soh cautioned that the idea of telehealth should not just be transactional in nature but that care can follow the patient – it is about a community of carers that work with the patient. Mr. Besler echoed a similar sentiment: “Telehealth should not just be about the monetary value, it should be about bringing value to patient, allowing them to choose encounters with healthcare based on their time and convenience.”  Although he did not have a direct experience from the perspective of a private healthcare provider in Singapore, Dr. Peng Chung Mien, chief executive officer, Farrer Park Hospital, said that his hospital is currently on a trial with insurance companies to use telehealth for assessment to see if clients need to physically go to an emergency department for treatment. This is in the context in which there are a lot of instances of people going into hospitals’ emergency departments for non-emergency-related cases. He added that the Ministry of Health’s regulation is that the first consultation of the patient with the doctor should always be in-person, and only subsequently followed up with telehealth sessions if required after the relationship has been established. Rethinking the patient experience  The ongoing theme during the panel session was back to the fundamentals in healthcare: how to bring about value, ultimately for patients and how to empower them. In short, how can patients be empowered to have ownership of their care? Mr. Besler shared that it helps to give patients access to their healthcare data and records, empowering them with information and advice, having that constant encounter of care that will improve their experience.  Sharing his perspective from Australia, Mr. Chris Mitchell, executive director of Information Communications & Technology, Hunter New England Health District, said that while it is relatively new, there is a movement toward the tagline "Nothing about me, without me," that is, really putting patients at the centre of care and any decisions being made is made in consultation with the patient. Parking of cars might be an afterthought for hospital design, but one of the patient-centric features that Dr. Peng said is happening at Farrer Park Hospital are parking spaces that allow two cars to park alongside each other yet also accommodate space for wheelchair and lift access.  “I think patient experience assumes a very linear relationship with the patient, one that happens at intervals and transactions in the healthcare model. My dream is that we have a better way to build a relationship with our patients,” Dr. Soh ended the session on a philosophical note.