MedShare is busting out BlackBerry handheld software to help home workers access, input and share client information remotely. Their big angle here is to replace the existing paper-based system with something a little quicker, but I think it’s safe to say that although BlackBerrys can help disseminate data faster, there’s no substitute for paper. Still, less paperwork and higher efficiency means less stress on home health staff and better retention.
Tag: medicalPage 2 of 2
We’ve got yet another addition to the BlackBerry Independent Software Vendor Alliance… today it’s Confidant, who make an app for mobiles which monitors, transmits and stores data relating to chronic disease, collected wirelessly from medical devices. Diabetes and obesity are their primary targets right now, with asthma and prescription dosage monitoring in the works, but it’s easy to see the far-reaching medical applications of this kind of platform. Confidant doesn’t just track and store information for the sake of making caregivers’ lives easier, but it also gives visualizations and feedback on health status so patients can see how they’re doing themselves. If that study looking at exactly this kind of patient care pans out, Confidant will have some good, hard numbers to back up their software.
Ronen just spotted some cool new free medical software for BlackBerry called Epocrates Rx. Epocrates is a drug and formulary reference guide, allowing for quick dosing, side-effects, monitoring, pharmacology and pricing information across over 3,300 drugs. This is the first BlackBerry software Epocrates is offering, but they have a bunch of deluxe packages for Palm and Windows Mobile that can hopefully be ported over to BlackBerrys soon.
A study is being launched by Firestone Institute for Respiratory Health at St. Joseph’s Healthcare in Hamiolton, Ontario where patients suffering from Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease will record and transmit their daily symptoms via BlackBerry. The handhelds will not only allow patients to communicate with health care professionals straight from home, but it should also allow for earlier intervention when situations worsen. The data gathered from the study could also help in determine trends in the disease.
“We also are hoping to pinpoint with more precision the high-risk peak periods of the year,” he said. Johnston said there are signs that the period between Christmas and New Year’s is a particularly risky period for COPD patients. Festive and family events, stress and different eating patterns may all have an impact on the severity of symptoms, he said but little is currently known about the causes of the Christmas epidemics of COPD.”
TauMed, a network for sharing medical experiences and information, has just opened up a mobile site for their service. The internet can be a sketchy place when it comes to medical advice – nothing can replace a warm-blooded doctor. But sometimes the experiences of others can round out your awareness of the issues that effect you. The community’s still young, having opened up around last October, but could prove to be a helpful database given some time to grow.
MedShare is now supporting BlackBerry functionality, allowing home care professionals to cut down on paperwork time by up to 10%. That might not seem like much, but anything the reduces the headaches of folks in health care is A-O-K in my books. MedShare really makes BlackBerry seem as the ideal choice as a platform for this kind of work.
“We’ve hit a critical mass,” [Barry Billings, president of MedShare] says. “We have electronic health records available through MedShare, wireless access through the BlackBerry platform, and society needing better health care access. Those three elements are combining to prompt the sector to re-invent how it delivers health care, and MedShare is the answer.”
Normally, I let boring BlackBerry software releases that involve paper-shuffling slip by, but when the person shuffling that paper is a medical professional trying to keep track of my grandmother’s innumerable ailments, I’ll stop to take pause. For any doctors in the house, more information can be found here.
