Telemedicine: Business Opportunities for Rural Broadband Providers
Posted by Jesse Ward on Monday, September 19, 2011 · 
(1) ·
The health care industry is under increasing pressure. Costs are rising and straining available resources. Currently, the U.S. spends more on health care than any other developed nation.[1] It accounts for 17% of U.S. GDP;[2] by 2017 it will top 19%.[3]
The population also is aging. By 2040 there will be twice as many Americans over age 65 than there are today.[4] Chronic conditions, which account for 75% of nation’s health care costs, are increasing across all ages.[5] Further, the current health care system is not without fault. For instance, on an annual basis, 1.5 million Americans are injured because of prescription drug errors.[6]
In rural areas, health care providers face additional challenges. Rural Americans experience more chronic conditions such as diabetes and heart disease than their urban and suburban counterparts.[7] People living in rural locations also face greater difficulty accessing quality health care. Although nearly 25% of the U.S. population lives in rural areas, less than 9% of physicians practice there.[8] As a whole, the country is expected to have a shortage of tens of thousands of physicians by 2020.[9]
Faced with these challenges, the health care industry is undergoing dramatic, evolutionary change. Regulatory, legislative and industry drivers are altering established pricing and reimbursement structures, enabling new treatment applications, and creating new standards of care, while simultaneously promising to reduce costs.
This transformation in the health care value chain will be facilitated and enabled through the use of technology. Broadband-enabled solutions, usually grouped under the name health information technology (HIT), will assist health care practitioners as they strive to more effectively and efficiently serve the patient.
Over the next few weeks, the New Edge will publish a series of articles exploring how the health care industry is adopting and utilizing information technology, and how broadband providers can support health care facilities, practitioners and patients with their technology needs. Read more
Telemedicine: Health Information Technology Services
Posted by Jesse Ward on Thursday, September 22, 2011 · ·
For many years there has been a movement in the health care industry to adopt technology; however, it was often implemented in an isolated fashion, mainly to increase administrative efficiencies and decrease paperwork. Today, industry-wide implementation of health information technology (HIT) promises to unite disparate systems and practitioner offices for more efficient and effective patient care. The government is funding several programs that are accelerating the adoption and utilization of HIT.
When discussing HIT, arguably the most important legislation is the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009, and its Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) provisions. The HITECH provisions create various programs to support the adoption and sustained utilization of HIT, and more specifically, the widespread use of electronic health records (EHRs).
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) has invested more than $23 billion in HIT initiatives. The majority of the funding, $20.6 billion, is set aside for incentive payments, designed to motivate health care institutions and practitioners to upgrade their hardware and software to enable EHRs. The HITECH provisions mandate that all health care facilities will need to be able to access and exchange patient health information via EHRs by 2015. If they are not ready, penalties will be assessed in the form of decreased reimbursement rates for Medicare patients.
The rest of the DHHS funding is devoted to the creation of data centers, and assisting health care providers with upgrading customer premises hardware and software. ARRA grants have been awarded to develop large-scale data centers, which enable health information exchange (HIE), the reliable and secure storage and transmission of health-related data among facilities, organizations and government agencies, according to national standards and in compliance with Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) regulations. Read more
Telemedicine: Remote Patient Monitoring
Posted by Jesse Ward on Wednesday, September 28, 2011 · ·
Remote patient monitoring uses devices to remotely collect, store and communicate biometric health information to practitioners. The technology allows health care providers to accurately monitor and intervene in the patient’s care before he presents at the doctor’s office or hospital. The field capitalizes on two trends in the health care marketplace—proactive care and patient mobility.
MedApps, a market leader, understands the benefits of this technology. Chief Executive Officer Kent Dicks notes that a connected patient is more compliant, more likely to conform to doctors’ orders, more inclined to take his medications and, as a result, stay out of the hospital.
MedApps produces a line of remote monitoring solutions including HealthPAL and HealthAIR, dedicated cellular devices that can be used wherever the patient is located. The technology communicates with retail medical devices—such as glucose meters, blood pressure monitors, scales and pulse oximeters—through wireless Bluetooth technology or a wired USB connection. MedApps’ devices collect data from these monitors and automatically upload the information to the patient’s EHR in the cloud via machine-to-machine cellular technology. The health care practitioner can view the data online, in his chosen application and export reports in various file formats.
MedApps’ technology is store-and-forward, but it can send data in near real-time. Read more