Speakers:
- This revolution is not about the technology itself, it is about access and communication, and improving the relationship between patients, and between patient and physician
- So much “fluff” in the system, technology is a means to enhance the core relationships and minimize the influence and intrusiveness of the middleman
- Online technologies allow physicians to reach out to patients and patients to reach out to other patients (the patient is the focal point)
- Hello Health: Patients can friend members of their care team, experiment with telemedicine, for example the patient can send photos to their dermatologist who can interpret
- Diabetes Hands: Two social networks for people “touched” by diabetes, including families, caregivers, healthcare professionals, pharma (as long as no promo intentions
-Tudiabetes and Estudiabetes (Spanish) is analogous to Facebook for diabetes patients (11 000 members for tudiabetes, US, Canada, UK, Australia; Estudiabets, Mexico, Spain, Columbia, Argentina, US)
- Why are both these innovations relevant? how to provide better care to patients while keeping costs under control, sharing patient experiences, sharing of best practices, bring out “closet conditions” that are suffered silently like diabetes, an “outlet”, identifying situations of misdiagnosis, opportunities and challenges
Epic Movie on dvd Audience Questions:
- Do you serve as a community of best practices? To what extend is health coaching part of your platform?
Hello Health: Large part of reaching out to patient via email, text, ensuring continuity of care, creating a strong relationship with your physician, the physicians provide coaching and disease management tools; individualized, not cookbook medicine
Diabetes Hands: Shared experiences provide expertise, portal of expertise, focused on individual needs, interest groups such as healthy eating best practices groups; Diabetes Hands will soon collaborate with prominent hospitals to tie community with the patient control records to better quantify what is happening
- I see Hello Health and Diabetes Hands as serving two extreme ends of the continuum - 2 places where consumers can get information- from physicians and from other patients - is there any plans to integrate these together?
Hello Health: Interoperability is important, but more organically designed into the system, relaying information between the physician and patient. In the future, we can see an integration of systems, stroner use of hyperlinks etc but the down side is that some technologies such as EMRs are disruptive to work flow and to physicians; benefits of separating functions. Future - can also make platform open source.
Diabetes Hands: Moving towards consolidation, collaboration, as even in the Health 2.0 space there are many programs serving as a variation on the same theme. But there is also value in having several types of programs, as patients can choose the one that they like the “feel” of the best (eg choices between google, yahoo etc).
- How do you make money off what you do?
Diabetes Hands: we are a non profit so we don’t monetize from members (take away from patient experience) we offer the service for free and seek grants from private funds and foundations.
Hello Health: By providing better engagement with patients and thus providing a better bang for the buck.
- How is information housed to protect patient confidentiality?
Hello Health: Information is housed securely, paperless, ensure portability, using latest security.
- Where do you see the line being drawn with “cookbook”/”customized” medicine?
Hello Health: I believe medicine is 1/2 art 1/2 science, technology can be a decision support at the point of care, but it should not be the decision itself
Diabetes Hands: Our online communities may be able to pick up things that do not lie on the traditional “roadmap” - where symptoms are actually the result of other things - perhaps a patient lost their job and their stress levels are resulting in symptoms, not a biological reason
- Where do efficiencies drive from?
Across the Universe buy
Hello Health: Structured emails become part of the medical record, can do ICD coding, reserving time for patients who need face to face care; high tech and high touch
subscription based model $35/month, $100/$200 for a visit - many of our clients don’t have health insurance, open access scheduling system, 48 hour guarantee, leave with free generic meds
- In the Tudiabetes model, are we ignoring the input of physicians?
Alerts in the system to refer back to physicians, although we recognize that physician is important - issues such as how to compensate if not volunteers, not forgetting individual experience.
