Healthcare IT NewsHealthcare IT News
  • Home
  • Sections
    • Industry News
    • Hospitals & IDNs
    • Physician Practices & Ambulatory Care
    • Payers
    • Vendors
    • International
  • Issues
    • February 2010
    • January 2010
    • December 2009
    • November 2009
    • October 2009
    • Sept. 2009
  • Resource Central
    • All Resources
    • Research
    • White Papers
    • Web Seminars
    • Videos
    • Podcasts
  • Blog
  • Events
  • Jobs
  • About
  • Subscribe
  • Advertise
  • Newsletters
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • Solutions Series
Select Your Homepage
Search eConnect
Login | Register
Home » News

E-mail to a FriendPrint
Social Bookmarking
  • Delicious Delicious
  • Digg Digg
  • StumbleUpon StumbleUpon
  • Reddit Reddit
  • Newsvine Newsvine
  • Furl Furl
  • Facebook Facebook
  • Google Google
  • Yahoo Yahoo
Partners HealthCare launches home health pilot

Partners HealthCare launches home health pilot

October 11, 2005 | Bernie Monegain, Editor

Suggested Content

  • Study finds parents will use mobile phones to manage a child's diabetes
  • Center for Connected Health chief urges participatory medicine
  • Study: EHRS improve care in community-based practices
  • Managing your diabetes online improves care
  • New AllOne Health deals highlight the cellphone's HIT capabilities
  • Founder weighs TEPR’s future
  • 101 Wireless Healthcare Applications Go Online
  • Online family health history tracker gets an update
  • Partners HealthCare launches home health pilot
  • Anticipation grows for at-home tech

BOSTON – Partners HealthCare has launched a pilot project aimed at providing better care for patients with leg wounds. The goal is to make it possible for a limited number of wound-care specialists to examine and treat more home health patients. The answer could be a cell phone camera.

The goal of the study, which started at the beginning of September with 34 patients, is to have the cameras in use for the entire patient load.

Partners has about 20 visiting nurses who each call on four to five patients per day. The patient load is high – about 500 altogether in a 30-mile radius of Boston. Leg wounds are common among patients diagnosed with diabetes. The right treatment at the right time is essential for healing. The visiting nurses don't have the expertise in caring for wounds that an enterostomal therapy nurse has. The specially trained ETNs take up to 15 years to train. They are in short supply. Partners has two ENTs on staff, and they spend most of their time at the hospitals. The cell phone digital photo is geared at providing expertise for home-care patients who might be miles away.

Using a Motorola MPX220 Smartphone, with a built-in digital camera, visiting nurses take pictures of the wounds. The phones automatically upload the photos to the Web application for the specialist to examine and develop a treatment plan.

"The device needed to kick off the transmission on its own," said Doug McClure, corporate manager for technology services, telemedicine for Partners.

Partners Telemedicine, a division of Partners HealthCare, is undertaking the new cell phone pilot, which grew out of a three-year study in which the visiting nurses took digital photos and mailed them to the ETN. The two would then discuss the best course of treatment. The process took about 2 1/2 days. The new pilot using the cell phone and Web application takes about 20 minutes.

It's important to have the right treatment, McClure said, and it is also critical to proper healing to treat the wound as soon as possible. So, cutting the consultation time to just a few minutes translates into better care for the patient.

Andrew Needleman, managing partner of Claricode, developed the application for Partners. Newton, Mass.-based Claricode customizes software exclusively for healthcare providers.

McClure and Needleman figured a cell phone camera could help cut the time to treatment, but they had to wait a couple of years for the cell phone technology to catch up.

Even today, questions remain about whether the picture quality of the cell phone will be sufficient to diagnose wounds properly, McClure said. However, with the development of much more processing power and simpler programming interfaces, Needleman is confident cell phones are going to play a major role in application development for healthcare and other industries.

A 2 plus megapixel phone camera is in the works, and it is likely to be a marked improvement over the 1.3 megapixel camera Partners uses today.

"In five years they'll be as powerful as computers," Needleman predicted. "There's going to be an ah-ah point at some iteration," he said. That's the point at which we'll roll this thing out to everybody."

Related Topics:
  • Andrew Needleman
  • Boston
  • cellular telephone
  • diabetes
  • Doug McClure

Reader Comments (0)Login to Post a Comment

receive news by email

Most Popular

Latest Headlines
Most Popular
  • Five healthcare IT decisions to avoid
  • Blumenthal: EHRs will become 'an absolute requisite' for docs
  • Video program puts docs at bedside 24/7 at MassGeneral
  • FCC to promote mobile health apps
  • Spheris bankruptcy could spark bidding war, with MedQuist in the lead
  • Sankaran maps government's promotion of healthcare IT
  • North Carolina group offers help with ARRA
  • New Hampshire hospital pulls its data together
  • KLAS questions vendor claims on HIEs
  • Terso expands to Germany

Resource Central

  • Web Seminars
    On-Demand--Part II-The Crystal Clear Healthcare Provider: How Cleveland Clinic Delivers Transparency to Stakeholders with Business Intelligence
  • Web Seminars
    On-Demand--Integrated, Real-time Decision Making – A Prescription for Improving Patient Outcomes and Your Bottom Line
  • Research
    Business Trends - Healthcare Technology
  • White Papers
    Six Things Hospitals Need to Know About Replacing Pagers With Smartphones
  • White Papers
    Solving Desktop Challenges in Healthcare with ScriptLogic's Desktop Authority
More Resources
Syndicate content

HEALTHCARE IT JOB SPOT

  • Software Engineer - GE Healthcare - Boston, MA
  • Lead Software Engineer - GE Healthcare - Boston, MA
  • Conversion Analyst - GE Healthcare - WA
  • Show Site Director - GE Healthcare - North Carolina
  • Health Information Manager - Center for Spinal Surgery - Nashville, TN
more jobs

  • Destination HIMSS

    Going to HIMSS this year? Then you can't afford to miss our Destination HIMSS site and newsletter. 

  • EHRWatch.com

    EHRWatch.com offers news, commentary and community participation on the developments in electronic health records.

  • Priming the Pump

    Priming the Pump provides practical news on the stimulus package and the incentives that it offers to healthcare providers.

  • Facebook

    Join Healthcare IT News on Facebook to connect with other readers!

  • NHINWatch

    Visit NHINWatch.com for coverage of the Nationwide Health Information Network.

  • Mobile Health Watch

    Stay up to date on the latest mobility news at Mobile Health Watch.

  • MedTech Publishing

    Visit our company Web page to learn more about MedTech Publishing.

  • LinkedIn

    Join our LinkedIn group to connect with other readers. Click here to join the group.

     

  • Healthcare IT Job Spot

    Check out the latest open positions at Healthcare IT Job Spot.

Marketplace

  • Home
  • Issues
  • Resource Central
  • Blog
  • Events
  • Subscribe
  • Advertise
  • About Us
  • Site Map
  • Privacy Policy
Healthcare IT News is a publication of MedTech Publishing Company LLC.
For more information about MedTech Publishing Company and its publications, please visit medtechpublishing.com.
©2009 MedTech Publishing
Powered by Phase2 Technology.