Patient Engagement in Healthcare
Technology is used as a tool for people to connect, engage, input and retrieve information. In the healthcare field, tools to amplify patient engagement allow patients to message securely with their healthcare providers, retrieve information quickly and effortlessly and input information that enables them to track their own health.
With the introduction of Meaningful Use Stage 2, patient engagement has gone from nice-to-have to necessary, and that transition requires hospital systems and physician practices across the country to employ tools that aid in this process (1). As expected, the proposed Stage 2 criteria focuses on how healthcare facilities can exchange key clinical information about patients and provide patients with online access to their health data (2).
PricewaterhouseCoopers’ Health Research Institute commissioned an online survey of 2,000 consumers and 1,000 physicians regarding their use and preference of mobile technologies in the United States. Only half of physicians surveyed currently access electronic medical records while visiting and treating their patients, a situation that will improve with Meaningful Use requirements for physicians to use interoperable electronic medical records (3). Physicians agreed that the greatest benefit of mobile health would be to help them make decisions fast by accessing more accurate data in real time (3). Some providers are offering software or apps that allow patients to message securely with their provider, monitor their health, and share tracking results with their doctor. By offering these means of engagement to patients, they save time gathering information, they can keep track of how their patient is doing, and they have the ability to answer questions quickly. Providing patients with these tools can lower readmission, increase patient engagement, and provide patients with a sense of accountability for their health.
More providers are witnessing the benefits of implementing mobile technology as a way to enhance care. Regardless whether healthcare professionals are the ones providing the information, patients are turning to mobile technology for information and support. People go online and are willing to share personal information with strangers in order to receive medical information inexpensively and immediately. In a study conducted by Pew Internet and American Life it was found that 74% of adults use the Internet and 80% of these adults have looked for health information online (4). The study also found that 34% of adult Internet users have read blogs or used social media to learn more about a medical issue or find support (4). While many people are open to sharing their health information with friends, family, or people with similar conditions, the information they are receiving in turn is not always accurate. By implementing tools that allow patients to engage with their healthcare providers, these healthcare professionals can protect their patients from being misinformed.
In the study conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers, 80% of adults aged 18-24 reported a willingness to share personal health information via social media, and 90% of this same group said they’d trust their social media contacts as sources of accurate health information (3). Providing ways in which people can engage with their healthcare providers for this information will guide where the information is coming from and prevent the inevitable misinformation that is bound to be collected through social media.
When asked who they would prefer to receive mobile health services from, consumers ranked their healthcare provider, hospital or health system as Number One, followed by their health insurer (3). People are turning to the Internet for health information because they use it for so many other inquiries. Unfortunately, a lot of the health information on the web is inaccurate and as stated above, people trust these sources that have no accountability. Healthcare professionals need to step in as the providers of information to their patients through mobile mediums. Mobile technology provides an inexpensive way to reach a lot of people at one time. If healthcare professionals took advantage of technology as a way to communicate and relay information to and from their patients they would reap extensive benefits.
The study by PricewaterhouseCoopers found 31% of consumers would be willing to incorporate an application into their existing cell phone or smart phone to be able to track and monitor their personal health information (3). 40% said they would be willing to pay for a device and a monthly subscription fee for a mobile phone application that would send text and e-mail reminders to take their medications, refill prescriptions or to access their medical records and track their health. 40% also said they would be willing to pay for a remote monitoring device and a monthly subscription that would send data automatically to their doctor health information such as heart rate, blood pressure, blood sugar and weight (3).
Physicians agree that patient compliance with doctor recommendations is a major obstacle to managing health outcomes, and 88% of physicians said they would like their patients to be able to track and/or monitor their health at home (3). Physicians, however, want to see filtered information or exceptions in their patient's health, not all the data all the time. Too much information could actually slow down care. Using software or apps allows healthcare providers to dictate what information their patients have to fill out or monitor. This way they are not inundated with too much information and can keep track of only what is vital to their patients’ care.
By implementing these tools, healthcare professionals can increase patient engagement, which in turn can lower readmissions, save time, and ensure their patients are receiving accurate information. Patients can keep track of vital health information and their providers can be alerted if the patients need to be brought in for a visit. Keeping track of their health at home is an important factor in managing health outcomes and according to research done by EURO RSCG, 44% of people would be more likely to adhere to a treatment program if they had a mobile app to keep them on track (5). Technology serves as a tool that allows patients to be engaged in their healthcare in a convenient, easy way. I’m sure we will see more of these programs implemented over the next year as healthcare professionals recognize the benefits they provide.
(1) Michelle, McNickle. "7 E-Health Tools To Get Patients Engaged." InformationWeek. UBM TechWeb, 08 2012. Web. 19 Oct 2012..
(2) Lucas, Mearian. "What Stage 2 'meaningful use' e-health rules mean." Computerworld Healthcare IT. Computerworld Inc, 28 2012. Web. 19 Oct 2012..
(3) PRNewswire. "Three in Ten Americans Would Use Their Cell Phone to Track Personal Health, Finds PricewaterhouseCoopers." PR Newswire. PR Newswire Association LLC, 08 2012. Web. 19 Oct 2012..
(4) Fox, Susannah. "The Social Life of Health Information, 2011." Pew Internet & American Life Project. pewinternet.org, 12 2011. Web. 19 Oct 2012..
(5) "The Promise of Mobile Health." Euro RSCG Life 4D. Euro RSCG Life 4D, n.d. Web. 19 Oct 2012..
FORCE Therapeutics designs web and mobile applications for injury rehabilitation and prevention.
FORCE TherEx and FORCE Premium are known to be the BEST EMR and HEP products in Physical Therapy and Rehab.
Please visit our website at www.forcetherapeutics.com
Injured baseball player recovers using FORCE TherEx
http://youtu.be/PKsgK7U0uXc
An injured baseball player discusses his experiences going through physical therapy and how finding a therapist who uses FORCE TherEx has really helped him along the road to recovery. This patient discusses how confusing traditional methods are and the great benefit of using exercise videos for home exercise programs.
To find out more about FORCE TherEx visit our website http://forcetherapeutics.com/
FORCE therapeutics designs web and mobile applications for injury rehabilitation and prevention.
FORCE TherEx and FORCE Premium are known to be the BEST EMR and HEP products in Physical Therapy and Rehab.
Please visit our website at www.forcetherapeutics.com
Accountable Care Organizations
Accountable Care Organizations to reduce health care costs
Our Dilemma
As many of you know, the gov’t has been starting programs to maintain our society’s current standard of living while chipping away our national deficit. So, what’s their next project that’s helping us out? The answer is ACOs or Accountable Care Organizations. The gov’t performed countless research on our health care system and came to the conclusion that it’s very decentralized. Health care providers weren’t communicating with one another about their patients - causing duplicated medical testing on patients and driving up costs. The gov’t also found baby-boomers are approaching their retirement age. This shift will put a major strain on all gov’t sponsored health care services like Medicare or Medicaid, as 2 out of 3 Americans over the age of 65 suffers from multiple chronic conditions.
What Are ACOs and How Can They Help?
NPR’s article, "Accountable Care Organizations, Explained," defines ACOs as, ‘a network of doctors and hospitals that shares responsibility for providing care to patients.’ The goal is to reduce duplicated/unnecessary tests without compromising the patient’s health and help drive costs down. Additionally, the gov’t will provide incentives for ACOs to keep patients healthy and out of the health care system. This program is purely voluntary and patients will have to option to visit doctors outside the program if they choose.
It is estimated the program will save Medicare close to $1 billion over the next 3 years. Arkansas is reported to save $372 million over the next 6 years alone. It’s nowhere near our $15 trillion debt, but it’s a sizable chunk that we can look forward to.
FORCE Therapeutics designs web and mobile applications for injury rehabilitation and prevention.
FORCE TherEx and FORCE Premium are known to be the BEST EMR and HEP products in Physical Therapy and Rehab.
Please visit our website at www.forcetherapeutics.com
What the ACA ruling means for Physical Therapists
by: Alexis Fotiu and Bronwyn Spira PT
The Supreme Court ruling on health care was announced today, upholding President Obama’s Affordable Care Act (ACA). The law requires individuals to have health insurance, either through their employers or a state-sponsored exchange. Beginning in 2014, people without health insurance will face a fine. The law also requires insurance companies to cover preventative care at no additional cost to consumers, bars insurers from setting a dollar limit on health coverage payouts, and bans them from denying coverage to people with pre-existing medical conditions. So what does this mean for doctors and clinics?
The number of individuals who will require health insurance will double. This means insurance companies are going to have to cover a lot more costs while doctors can expect to treat twice as many patients. The problem with this is that doctors need time and resources to provide quality care. If they are seeing two patients in the amount of time they used to treat one, people are concerned they will not be able to receive the quality care they need. Companies are going to have to cover health insurance for more people. In order for them to do this, reimbursements are going to be less per visit and doctors are going to be required to see more patients per day, so doctors need to act more efficiently. One great solution for this is for doctors to use technology that enables them to speed up administrative time, lower costs, and allows them to spend quality time with their patients.
Digital technology in health care is becoming increasingly popular as doctors see the benefits to using programs and devices that save them time. Doctors can use these programs on devices such as laptops, tablets, and smartphones to record and send information during the visit that they used to have to sit and input after patient visits (creating long hours of administrative work). Patients use these devices to download programs that monitor their health and receive information instantly. These programs will become crucial to healthcare professionals as their patient load increases.
The American Physical Therapy Association (APTA) released a statement soon after the ruling stating, “While neutral on the ACA from the beginning, APTA has for years been an advocate for a health care system that includes rehabilitation as a core benefit, demonstrates the value of physical therapy to patients, embraces innovation in reforms that are patient centered, and provides a solution to a system that for too long has been in high costs and disparate in outcomes and quality”. From a practical standpoint, physical therapists will need to adopt technologies that improve efficiency and speed up workflow as they experience an influx of patients as a result of the ACA. These technologies allow for physical therapists to provide quality care while saving time spent on administrative work (time that could and should be spent treating more patients). Whether you support the ACA or not, one thing is certain: it will result in a need for more physical therapists to embrace innovations that will allow them to continue to provide quality care.
FORCE therapeutics designs web and mobile applications for injury rehabilitation and prevention.
FORCE TherEx and FORCE Premium are known to be the BEST EMR and HEP products in Physical Therapy and Rehab.
Please visit our website at www.forcetherapeutics.com
Motion Detection and Monitoring Tools: how the Wii and Kinect are influencing the field of health and wellness
By Alexis Fotiu & Bronwyn Spira PT
The developers of motion detection devices such as Nintendo’s Wii and Microsoft’s Kinect are focusing more and more on the health and fitness capabilities of these devices. These game consoles are popular for playing games such as soccer, tennis, and baseball and doing exercise videos that focus on strength training, aerobics, yoga, and balance. The fitness and health care industry is now starting to see motion detection and monitoring tools emerge as a way of providing virtual therapy to patients. The Wii is already being used to help treat Veteran patients and people with Alzheimers. The release of Microsoft’s Kinect Software Development Kit for Windows is increasing health professionals’ interests in these motion detection devices as well. Motion detection and monitoring tools seem to be the next trend in physical therapy and rehabilitation. How do these devices work and what benefits will they bring to physical therapy patients and clinicians?
The Wii comes with a Wiimote, which is the primary controller for the Wii console. A main feature of the Wii remote is its motion sensing capability, which allows the user to interact with and manipulate items on screen via gesture recognition (1). This allows someone playing a video game to actually participate physically in the game they are playing. Players enact the kicking of a soccer ball, throwing of a baseball, or swing of a tennis racquet and the motion detector picks up these movements and displays them on the screen. Healthcare professionals could easily leverage the potential in both motion detection and monitoring tools to rehabilitate patients with injuries or disabilities.
"The Wii is a great tool to promote exercise, strengthen cognitive ability and aid visual spatial problems," said Michaele Sheehan, physical therapist at the VA Medical Center in Denver, Colorado (2). In fact, physical therapists at many VA centers are seizing the opportunity to use the motion detection device in the rehabilitation of Veterans and older patients. Robert Engelbrecht, an army Veteran treated at the Houston VA, has used the Wii as part of his physical therapy regime for the past two years. "It's more difficult than I expected. It gives me a challenge and is more interesting than other therapy exercises" (2). Engelbrecht lost his leg in combat and has been using the Wii gaming system to aid in his recovery of balance and strength in his left side. "The Wii is motivational and gives Veterans great feedback," said Flynn, a VA physical therapist in Houston. "The visual feedback from the screen is better than me telling them they are off balance" (2). The Wii engages patients because it enables them to be competitive, have fun, and stay fit all while completing their physical therapy exercises.
Following on the heels of Nintendo’s Wii platform, Microsoft released the Kinect device in 20XX. Kinect has a movement recognition camera (a webcam-style add-on) and does not require a controller, which makes it easier for older generations to use. The webcam sensor can read all of your movements and determine how well you're using your muscles, how many calories you're burning and more (4). Fishing Cactus, a company in Belgium, developed the first serious medical game for Kinect in 2010. The game is called R.O.G.E.R. (Realistic (in) Observation Game and Experiences (in) Rehabilitation). The game was made for patients who suffer from a lack of logic and organizational skills (typically post-stroke patients, Alzheimer, hemi-negligent patients, and patients with similar symptoms) (4).
The developers of R.O.G.E.R. created a photo-realist environment running directly on the Xbox 360 composed of a bedroom, bathroom and a dressing room in which representations of objects are placed. The therapist can assign tasks to the patient to observe how they react. An example the company gave was assigning the task of packing for a trip to a specific location (such as the beach). Therapists could then observe what items the patient would pack and if they remembered where objects were located. It helps the health professionals to analyze and observe if patients are disorganized and see where they have lost their common sense (3).
Fishing Cactus presented R.O.G.E.R. during Microsoft TechDays in 2011 and hopes to have the program completed by 2012 (5). The development of R.O.G.E.R. shows that the use of virtual therapy is not only being used for physical rehabilitation but for cognitive rehabilitation as well. The possibilities provided by virtual therapy seem endless as technology continues to advance.
On February 1 2012, Microsoft Research released Kinect for Windows Software Development Kit
This commercial software development tool will allow software engineers to develop programs that serve as an interface between windows and the Kinect. The possibilities for this tool in physiotherapy are greatly enhanced by the ability to use Kinect with a PC. For instance, therapists could use this tool to create individualized home exercise programs that the patient could follow at home. Data about the quality and quantity of each exercise performed would be recorded so that the therapist could review the patient's progress. (6)
There are numerous benefits to using a system like this. A virtual therapy program would provide instant feedback to both patients and therapists. Patients would be more motivated to complete their physical therapy exercises, since they know they are being monitored. It encourages patients to complete their therapy with as much accuracy as possible since it is difficult for them to “cheat” when performing activities due to the camera’s ability to detect and sense whole body position (6). The “gaming” component can also positively affect outcomes since the patients are now in a more competitive environment.
While these devices are great at providing an easy, engaging, and fun way for patients to recuperate, there are some disadvantages. The accuracy of these devices is questionable. Kinect is able to identify joints regardless of body position with 98.4% accuracy but is not able to detect fine motor activity (6). While this level of accuracy seems high, when it comes to peoples’ health, 100% accuracy is really required in order to provide efficient treatment. Also, therapists and patients will need training to learn how to use Kinect, especially when it comes to developing a patient’s home exercise program. In order for this form of physical therapy to be applied, both patients and clinics will need to own the device, which may not be practical or affordable.. (6). Even for patients who have the device, Kinect is not very portable, restricting patients to their home in order to complete their HEP.
Even though these disadvantages may prevent virtual therapy from being implemented right away, it is clear that these developments in technology are generating the interests of health professionals around the world. There is a great opportunity to modernize the way patients receive care. Motion sensor and monitoring tools are becoming increasingly popular and, according to a pilot program at the VA, patients who have used these devices as a form of physical therapy love the interactive tools and are more enthusiastic about completing their exercises than they were with traditional physical therapy. As technology continues to iterate and the demand for virtual therapy increases among patients, we can expect motion detection and monitoring tools to play a significant role in the future of remote physical therapy treatment.
Raphael Cariou, a 3D App Designer, along with his company Reality Frontier, is creating motion capture capabilities for iPhone, Windows Phone 7 and Android with a long-term goal of specializing in augmented reality for mobile applications (7). Raphael and his team are building mobile applications that can analyze the content of photos and videos otherwise known as motion capture (MoCap). MoCap is the process by which a device can capture patterns of live movement of a person or object. The data is then transmitted to a computer, where simulation software displays it applied to a virtual actor.
Motion detection is grabbing the attention of developers everywhere and inevitably will play a major role in future care delivery models.
1) "Wii Remote." Wikapedia. Wikapedia, 08 02 2012. Web. 2 Mar 2012. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wii_Remote>.
2) "Wii-hab: Veterans Get More Than Fun With Wii Rehab." United States Department of Veterans Affairs. U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, 10 03 2010. Web. 5 Mar 2012. <http://www.va.gov/health/NewsFeatures/20100308a.asp>.
3) "Fishing Cactus presents R.O.G.E.R, the first Medical Kinect Serious game." Fishing Cactus. Fishing Cactus, 2010. Web. 2 Mar 2012.
4) Dray, Sarah. "Kinect Vs. Move Exercise | LIVESTRONG." LIVESTRONG. Demand Media, Inc, 06 11 2011. Web. 10 Mar 2012. <http://www.livestrong.com/article/550854-kinect-vs-move-exercise/>.
5) "Microsoft supports “ROGER”, 1st Medical Serious Game on Kinect." CAPE CALM. Capecalm, Inc, 2011. Web. 10 Mar 2012. <http://capecalm.tv/2011/03/01/microsoft-supports-roger-1st-medical-serious-game-on-kinect-enmicrosoft-techdays-2011/>.
6) "X-Box and Kinect in Physiotherapy." Physiopedia. Physiopedia, 06 02 2012. Web. 2 Mar 2012. <http://www.physio-pedia.com/index.php/X-Box_and_Kinect_in_Physiotherapy>.
FORCE therapeutics designs web and mobile applications for injury rehabilitation and prevention.
FORCE TherEx and FORCE Premium are known to be the BEST EMR and HEP products in Physical Therapy and Rehab.
Please visit our website at www.forcetherapeutics.com
Recent Posts
- Are patients tracking their own health?
- FORCE Packs deliver mobile flights of care for iPhone, iPad & iPod Touch
- Digital Patient Management and Tracking System for Physical Therapists
- Regulation of Medical Apps by the FDA: What qualifies as a “medical app”
- What is the Role of Movement Assessment in Athletics? Is it Prevention or Performance Enhancement?
Categories
- ACA
- android
- Apps
- Electronic Alerts
- EMR
- Evidence-based practice
- Fitness
- government
- healthcare
- HIPAA
- iphone
- mhealth
- News
- Patient Compliance
- Patient portal
- Physical Therapy
- Podcasts
- Politics
- Social Media
- Technology
- Video Exercise
Calendar
Tags
Meta
Stay Connected
