AHRQ-Funded Talking Touchscreen® Expanded for New Uses

The Talking Touchscreen®, a multimedia health information technology tool, was developed as a user-friendly way of assessing patient-reported outcomes and as a tool to help end health disparities in underserved populations. The CancerHelp Talking Touchscreen® and DiabetesHelp Talking Touchscreen® have been integrated with the CancerHelp Institute’s patient education programs. Patients now have access to information from AHRQ, the National Cancer Institute and the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases on treatment, support, side effects and screening. 

The Talking Touchscreen framework has also been built into an application called Health LiTT (available at http://www.healthlitt.org ), a measure of health literacy that can be self-administered in either English or Spanish using sound, text, and images. It covers health- and insurance-related topics and informed consent. The Talking Touchscreen/La Pantalla Parlanchina and Health LiTT have also been incorporated into Assessment Center, a free online research management tool that helps researchers create study-specific Web sites for securely capturing participant data (available at http://www.assessmentcenter.net ). By overcoming assessment barriers to self-administration of questionnaires, these tools enable new insight into previously undetected disease or treatment problems among low literacy patients, and also enable real-time reporting of health literacy scores.
The CancerHelp-Talking Touchscreen is available at http://www.cancerhelp.org .

To learn more about how this innovative tool is helping patients, read the Impact Case Study at: http://www.ahrq.gov/policymakers/case-studies/cp31312.html. 

AHRQ Update on HIT Research Activities

Health Information Technology

Electronic health records can lower prescribing errors
Health information exchange reduces use of repeated diagnostic imaging for back pain
Resident, attending faculty physicians find patient portal experiences not what they expected

Report Evaluates Role of Social Media in Chronic Disease Care

A new report from the eHealth Initiative finds that social media could help alleviate the burden of chronic disease on the U.S. health care system. However, the report notes that several challenges -- including privacy concerns, gaps in social media adoption and the quality of online information -- must be addressed. Government Health IT, eHI release. Read More

For the report, researchers conducted a literature review, as well as an environmental scan that included case studies and interviews.
The California HealthCare Foundation provided support for the report. CHCF publishes iHealthBeat.
The report found that social media can help individuals with chronic diseases:

• Achieve personal goals;
• Correct high-risk behavior; and
• Better manage their conditions.

It also noted that social media tools offer a unique social network of support, motivation and education.
However, the report identified several challenges that must be addressed to fully leverage social media in chronic disease care, including:

• Balancing transparency and anonymity;
• Concerns about privacy and HIPAA compliance;
• The digital divide among elderly and minority populations; and
• Quality, validity and authenticity of online information.

Example of an app that can cheer you up and make monitoring your blood sugar easier

MySugr Diabetes Companion is one of many Apps that makes it easy to record and track your blood-sugar levels.
When you check your blood sugar, you can record your levels in MySugr. You can add emotion badges to record if you were feeling sleepy, grumpy or other things.
You can also track what you eat through MySugr by taking photos of your food. Your results are then turned into easy-to-read graphs that document your blood-sugar levels. And when you need to show the doctor your results, you can easily print out your information right from the app.
One of my favorite features is the MySugr monster. Your daily results affect the monster, so it makes it a fun and motivational way to monitor your levels.  
Links: 
play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mysugr.android.companion

Australian researchers sum up risks with medical apps

Concerns are broken down into four key categories: infrastructure, distracters, privacy and security, and app developers.

The first group relates to the network infrastructure at a healthcare facility or wherever the healthcare provider is aiming to use medical apps. Of course, without a cell signal, most medical apps won’t work. The researchers also note that some hospital set-ups could have bandwidth issues if too many healthcare providers are attempting to use apps simultaneously.

Distraction-related issues that the researchers noted include email sign ups, pop-ups, icons/badges, notifications, and email alerts. The distractibility of other apps resident on mobile devices has been a concern for many years. The patient’s perception that a medical profession may not be paying attention to them and making eye contact because they are using a medical app is a related concern.

The researchers cite concerns about medical app developers. Developers may lack an understanding of healthcare contexts and standards. They may be using data mining tools as mentioned above. They may also have included very little (if any) end user input during the design of their apps, which could lead to safety risks and inaccurate information or algorithms.

While the researchers’ concerns shouldn’t be new to longtime mobile health watchers, the report sums them up tidily. The entire January edition of the medical journal, which focused on mobile health regulation, is available for free as a PDF right now.

EHRs Could Divert Too Much Doctor Attention

Nonverbal cues may get overlooked and affect doctors’ ability to pay attention and communicate with patients when physicians spend too much time looking at the computer screen in the exam according to a Northwestern Medicine study. 
Among the most important factors are physicians’ communication skills and their individual style of interacting with patients. In addition, the culture of the health care organization can affect implementation and use of EHRs in patient-physician interactions.

Removing spatial barriers, such as installing mobile monitors or configuring examination rooms to enable physicians to maintain eye contact while using the computer and allow patients to view the computer screen easily can help promote "inclusive" use of computers in clinical encounters, the report concluded.  Read More

Studies show positive health effects from patient-doctor communication

A team of Dutch scientists has conducted a review of published studies that looked at how electronic communication between doctors and patients — like email or messaging through a patient-facing EHR portal — affects care outcomes, health behavior, and patient satisfaction. In the paper, recently published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, researchers looked particularly at studies focused on chronically ill patients.

Keep reading>>

Researchers Study Impact of Diabetes Telemonitoring in Patient-Centered Medical Homes

New AHRQ-funded research uncovered important implementation considerations for telemonitoring of blood glucose and blood pressure in diabetes patients receiving care in patient-centered medical homes. The article and abstract, “Implementing Home Blood-Glucose and Blood-Pressure Telemonitoring in Primary Care Practices for Patients With Diabetes: Lessons Learned,” appeared online December 18 in Telemedicine and E-Health. Researchers gathered perspectives from stakeholders, including patients, nurse care coordinators, and physicians, to understand the impact of using information technology to monitor diabetes patients from a distance. Stakeholders emphasized the need to involve and prepare physicians and patients about how to effectively use telemonitoring. They also stressed the importance of considering workflows, flow of information, and human factors to optimize use of the technology.

Despite risks, patients want to share data

A survey of 2,125 adults with health conditions who are already members of PatientsLikeMe found that 94 percent of adults would be willing to share their health information on social media if it helps doctors improve care even though a majority of those surveyed also understand the data could also be used negatively. The survey was done in partnership with the Institute of Medicine.
Keep reading>>

National Compendium of Best Practices in Telehealth Services

The California Telehealth Resource Center has compiled a lengthy list of telehealth best practices.   As you begin….Lessons from the field
This document provides a complete compendium of best practices developed from CTRC’s 10 year experience developing telehealth programs and added to by a panel of telehealth experts from across the country.

“Often overlooked, the sharing of what works and what doesn’t is very important!”

– James Marcin, MD, MPH, Director, Pediatric Telemedicine
UC Davis Children’s Hospital

 Read More

3 best practices for "selling" telehealth and mHealth | How to bridge the 9x gap

Inside Hands On Telehealth

The illustration below, taken from the original HBR article, helps to visualize the gap.
Thanks to a recent interview with Dr. Saif Abed of Abed Graham Healthcare Strategies, I came across a fascinating article in Harvard Business Review (HBR) entitled “Eager Sellers and Stony Buyers.”

It discusses why people have such a hard time accepting/adopting a new product or service as compared to the one they already have in place.



Read More

Gender, Personality Affect Medical Students' EHR Perceptions

A new study finds that gender and personality traits affect how medical students perceive the usefulness and usability of electronic health record systems. For example, the study finds that male medical students were more likely than female students to report that EHRs are easy to use. Clinical Innovation & Technology et al.More

Sites for medical resources

All of these sites have something unique and helpful to offer, so be sure to look at each one. Just remember that these sites are not substitutions for a real doctor's advice.
Ask A Patient - Do you really know what you're in for when you take medication? Medical science has come a long way, but sometimes medication cons outweigh the pros.
This site is for anyone who is worried about trying a new physician-prescribed medication. You can look through reviews from real people about the experiences (positive and negative) they've had on doctor-prescribed medication to make more educated decisions. Just remember to take everything on this site with a grain of salt.

LongTermCare.gov - For those of you who worry about aging parents or grandparents, this is a great site to start planning for the future. Planning for that sort of thing is easy to put off, but if you don't think about the future, you may be left high and dry if trouble strikes.
This site answers questions about long-term care for your loved ones like the difference between Medicare and Medicaid, and long-term care versus custodial care. The more information you have, the better the chance will be that you make the best decision for your loved ones.

PDR Health - Asking other people about their experiences can be helpful, but when it comes to the medical field it's important to listen to your doctor. After all, they do have years of medical training.
Physicians' Desk Reference has a huge database of medication information, as well as information about diseases, conditions, and what you should avoid when taking medications.

Hospitals rank alarm fatigue as top patient safety concern

Nineteen out of 20 hospitals surveyed rank alarm fatigue as a top patient safety concern, according to the results of a national survey presented last week at the annual meeting of the Society for Technology in Anesthesia.
Alarm fatigue occurs when clinicians become desensitized to the constant noise of alarms or overwhelmed by the sounds and turn alarms down or off. The problem has become so widespread that last month The Joint Commission named it a National Patient Safety Goal and now requires accredited hospitals and critical access hospitals to improve their systems.
Related Articles:
Monitor adjustments reduce alarm fatigue at Boston hospital
Patient safety goal aims to end clinical alarm fatigue
Alarm fatigue tops health technology hazards list
Patient death attributed to alarm fatigue, sounding alarm in nation
Patients continually put in danger due to alarm fatigue
Read more about: National Patient Safety Goal

Telestroke: Improving Stroke Care for Rural Arizona Residents

Telestroke: Improving Stroke Care for Rural Arizona Residents

By Jane Erikson on Jan 21, 2014 03:41 pm

In 2005, patients who were hospitalized with an ischemic stroke in Tucson or Phoenix were 10 times as likely to receive potentially life-saving medical care as patients treated at hospitals in rural Arizona.
Today, patients in rural Arizona have as good or even better chance of receiving the best possible treatment – a “clot-busting” drug called tPA - compared with stroke patients in the state’s two largest cities.
The change came about because of the Telestroke Program at the Mayo Clinic – Phoenix.

Read more »

PSFK presents Future Of Health

 

PSFK presents Future Of Health from PSFK

Advances in technology are allowing for the provision of affordable, decentralized healthcare for the masses and are lowering the barriers to entry in less developed markets.

The analysis in PSFK’s Future of Health Report has yielded a number of insights, the most evident of which is mobile technology as a catalyst for change. The mobile phone and connected tablet computer are allowing for the distribution of a broad range of medical and support services. This is especially important in countries with little or no healthcare infrastructure and areas in which there are few trained healthcare professionals. These technologies also allow trained professionals to perform quality control remotely.
 

SAFER Guides help optimize safe use of EHRs

A new set of guides and interactive tools designed to help health care providers use electronic health records (EHRs) more safely has been released by the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC). The SAFER Guides are a suite of tools that include checklists and recommended practices to help health care providers assess and optimize the safety and safe use of EHRs.

The SAFER Guides complement AHRQ’s existing safety tools and research. AHRQ’s Patient Safety Organizations have identified health IT as a high priority given the impact EHRs are having on patient safety right now. AHRQ has a wide variety of health IT tools and resources to help implement and use Health IT safely including the Health IT Hazard Manager, the Workflow Assessment for Health IT Toolkit, Implementation Tools for E-Prescribing, Consumer Health IT Design Guide, and the Guide to Reducing Unintended Consequences of EHRs.

Deloitte’s four P’s for mobile health best practices

Mobile health strategies shouldn’t be one-size-fits-all, Dr. Harry Greenspun, Deloitte’s Senior Advisor on Health Care Transformation and Technology, wrote in a recent blog post. There are four dimensions that need to be considering in developing a mobile health intervention or technology. Greenspun breaks down the focus areas into four P’s: People, Payment, Places, and Purpose.  More

Telemonitoring to Support Diabetes Management in Patient Centered Medical Homes

New research supported by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) uncovered important implementation considerations for telemonitoring of blood glucose and blood pressure in diabetes patients receiving care in patient-centered medical homes. “Implementing home blood-glucose and blood-pressure telemonitoring in primary care practices for patients with diabetes: Lessons Learned,” appeared online December 18, 2013 in Telemedicine and e-health. Researchers gathered perspectives from stakeholders including patients, nurse care coordinators, and physicians to understand the impact of telemonitoring diabetes in primary care practices. Stakeholders emphasized the need to involve and prepare physicians and patients to effectively use telemonitoring. They also stressed the importance of considering workflows, flow of information, and human factors to optimize use of the technology.

Select to access the abstract: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24350806. 

IOM Seeks To Help Providers Assess EHR Costs, Benefits

The Institute of Medicine has released a proposed model aimed at helping hospitals and other health care providers evaluate the costs and benefits of implementing electronic health record systems by making comparisons among organizations and identifying best practices. FierceEMR et al.

UnitedHealthcare, Zamzee partner for weight loss pilot

Last year, UnitedHealthcare announced a partnership with Konami to bring the classroom version of its DanceDanceRevolution exergame to a pilot group of schoolchildren in Florida, Georgia, and Texas. Now UnitedHealthcare is continuing that pilot, adding a fourth school in Southern California. The company is also starting a new pilot with another big name in the kids’ digital health space — social activity tracker platform Zamzee.  Join for Me is a 12-month community program geared towards helping overweight and obese 6 to 17-year-olds lose weight and reduce their risk of Type 2 diabetes. According to Henderson, Zamzee activity trackers will be given to both children and parents to help encourage movement and activity while participants are at home or school and away from the YMCA-based program. The pilot will collect data comparing kids who used Zamzee with other kids in the Join for Me program.  More

Video game maker partners with Pfizer for Alzheimer’s clinical trial

Boston-based Akili Interactive Labs partnered with Pfizer to conduct a study of Akili’s iOS-based game, Project Evo, in the hopes of using the game to detect indications of Alzheimer’s in healthy individuals.
The month-long study of 100 participants includes a mix of some who have risk markers of potentially developing Alzheimer’s and some who do not. All participants will take the game home and play it daily while researchers test whether the algorithms within the game can distinguish the group with risk markers.  More

Gamification in Healthcare

Gamification Trends:

The Best of Health Gamification in 2013

In our next collection from the best gamification stories of 2013, we have a cornucopia of healthy gamified applications for everyone to check out. Gamification Co readers were most interested in seeing new health apps in 2013 and we have about 20 of the top health apps for you to check out here.
Here’s to seeing even more at 2014! (Especially with all that new stuff at CES)
read more

 

How Gameplay Transfers Knowledge into Skills

Games are tools for rewiring your brain. When you’re playing a game what you’re essentially doing is building new neurological connections and strengthening them with a process called myelination.
You build new networks that can be used outside the game, then strengthen them through repetition. Now there’s the highly contextualized questions of what skills the game is creating and if its transferable outside that game into the real world. Not all games develop the same skills and not all skills are used in particular fields (these studies are relatively new so expect new insights in the future). Knowledge management has two terms I adopted to understand knowledge transfer from games: adaptation and exaptation, which can acts a lens to understand knowledge transfer from playing games.
read more

  

New Australian Facility is Teaching Dementia-Care By Simulating It

Alzheimer’s Australia Vic has opened up Australia’s first dementia learning center to educate people about the effects of dementia through virtual-reality simulations, according to Australian Ageing Agenda.
The simulation’s primary goal is allow students to envision the cognitive and perceptual difficulties that dementia sufferers deal with in their daily life routines.
read more

 

Slideshow: Health devices launched at CES 2014

French company Medissimo’s smart pill box imedipac is a feature-filled spin on medication adherence hardware. The device both reminds patients to take pills and tracks when they have using GPS. Users can review information on their computer or on specialized phone or tablet apps. It can send alarms via text message, email, or even call you on the phone and leave voice messages.

CES is upon us again. According to the Boston Globe, the Las Vegas consumer electronics show is dedicating 40 percent more floor space to digital health than last year and more than 300 digital health companies are exhibiting. Whether or not those stats are illustrative, digital health is still a more popular topic at CES than it ever has been. And with more and more big companies like Sony and LG getting into fitness and activity tracking, even the definition of a digital health company is blurring.  More

Vida! Engaging Citizens in Their Own Health

¡Vida! emerged from work with breast cancer survivors who, despite five years or more since the breast cancer diagnosis, clearly articulated their goal not only to live, but to live well.
Named from the Spanish word meaning “life,” ¡Vida! is a monthly partner educational series for patients and their professional health care teams. Guided by a broad-based Community Partnership Group, ¡Vida! has been proactively addressing the identified needs of patients and their families across the state of Arizona.
While ¡Vida! originally began with a focus on breast cancer survivorship, the series has evolved to include topics related to lifestyle medicine, wellness, and advocacy with the overarching goal of engaging Arizona’s citizens in their own health!

Read more »

Telehealth 'parity' continues to make inroads via state legislation

Individual states continue to press forward with telehealth legislation, as evidenced by recent news out of Montana and a forthcoming effort in Florida.

A bill introduced to Congress last month--the Telehealth Modernization Act--seeks to establish a federal definition of telehealth and clear up the confusion from myriad state policies.
"Telehealth is a major contributing factor to increased health care quality, convenience, and lower costs," said Reps. Doris Matsui (D-Calif.) and Bill Johnson (R-Ohio), who introduced the Telehealth Modernization Act. "However, there currently are 50 separate sets of rules as to what type of care can be provided. This often leaves both providers and patients in a state of uncertainty."
Meanwhile, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services last month announced that changes to Medicare's 2014 physician fee schedule would incrementally expand coverage for telehealth services.

More

Telehealth Coverage for Extended for Military Service Members

The 2014 National Defense Authorization Act signed last week by President Obama includes a measure designed to bolster military service members' access to telemedicine services. The measure will extend the Transitional Assistance Management Program by 180 days for all services delivered via telemedicine. FierceHealthIT, Rep. Thompson release. More

Medical Technology Stories To Watch at CES 2014

forbes.com · At the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show, (CES 2014) this January in Las Vegas,  expect a storyline shift away from the annual event’s typical focus on everyday consumer electronics — such as smartphones, tablets and televisions — towards other growth markets such as medical technology, health products and applications.  Including
Real-time remote monitoring, Aging-in-Place offerings....More

Do Patient Portals Improve Healthcare?

  Do Patient Portals Improve Healthcare? - InformationWeek informationweek.com

Study results are mixed on how portals affect the quality and efficiency of patient care, suggesting more research is needed.

•  Healthcare practices need to focus more on patient engagement when it comes to web portals. Read Patient Portals Aren't Very Patient Centric

Medicare and Medicaid to encourage more telehealth visits in 2014

David Hemler

CEO at Revation Systems, Inc.

Medicare and Medicaid to encourage more telehealth visits in 2014
http://hub.am/K6HpOR

Use of telehealth network can boost care, study says hub.am

Study shows how telehealth networks can save lives and money.

Story Highlights

• Doctors who work at remote locations can help several hospitals at a time
• Research appeared in CHEST Journal
• Practice can boost rural hospitals with smaller staffs