The following appeared a few days ago.
Beating Resistance to Home Monitoring
March 24, 2008
Health care organizations and information technology vendors still face formidable challenges in convincing private insurers to adopt home health monitoring technologies.
Yet, vendors can overcome insurer resistance by providing independently verifiable trial results and further education regarding the benefits of home health monitoring technologies, according to a new study by Parks Associates, a Dallas-based research firm.
The study, “Private Insurance and Digital Health Solutions,” is based on interviews in January with 20 senior executives from private health insurers.
“With U.S. market potential of $2.5 billion in device and service revenues by 2012, the home health monitoring industry has every incentive to convince private insurers, along with other potential payers, of the technology’s value and feasibility,” said Harry Wang, senior analyst at Parks Associates.
More here:
http://www.healthdatamanagement.com/news/home_health25946-1.html
I think the importance of this area has been badly underestimated and that Australia is way behind the curve in the adoption and use of these technologies.
I recently had an e-mail conversation with a real Australian expert in the area:
Professor Branko Celler, BSc, BEE(Hons), PhD, FIEAust, Member IEEE, Foundation Fellow ACHI who is Director, Biomedical Systems Laboratory and Laboratory for Health Telematics at the University of NSW.
Branko is also CEO of TeleMedCare Pty. Ltd.
I will quote just a few paragraphs to give you a flavour of what he is saying:
“There is no doubt in my mind that the e-health agenda in Australia has been relatively ineffective for more than a decade, with an excessive focus on Electronic Health Records and national large scale IT projects and no national strategy or policy on how to deploy and mainstream telehealth services for managing chronic disease in the community.”
“As an example, during this time the UK has invested enormous intellectual resources to developing a policy framework for achieving these aims and have produced some superb white papers and other documents. These then led to policy initiatives such as the £80 million assistive technology grant (2006-2007), followed by three large scale demonstrators, all designed to create a telehealth industry and mainstream new ways of delivering community based healthcare services. All over the last eight years or so!”
“New Zealand, the EU and even the US are all responding in similar ways, in recognition that ageing communities and the increasing burden of chronic disease will simply not allow Governments to continue delivering and funding healthcare services as they do today!”
“I am summarizing these activities to indicate that these technologies are no longer bleeding edge, they are tried and reliable and becoming increasingly sophisticated, with decision support systems that are beginning to reliably risk stratify patients being monitored as stable, showing early signs of exacerbation of their condition, or rapidly leading to an acute crisis.”
“The awareness of these developments in Australia is remarkably poor, even among public health specialists, health administrators and health economists. In an attempt to overcome this Marc Budge and I, under the auspices of the ARC and NH&MRC Ageing Well Research Network ran a one day workshop in Canberra in Oct of 2006, that did help a little in getting some visibility in Government.”
“Where are we in Australia? Not very far I fear, unless this new government makes e-health a serious part of its reform agenda! Some of the states are slowly becoming active. Victoria is quite advanced, SA recently released a tender for telehealth services, WA is beginning to convert its general interest into some activity, and Queensland will I am sure in the near future, become quite active. NSW we don’t need to talk about!
However at National level, we are at least 10 years behind the UK and Europe and have effectively a policy vacuum in Canberra! We can but hope that the new Government with these new initiatives will extend the e-health agenda beyond NEHTA and the EHR, to on the ground, new ways of delivering health care services and managing the chronically ill not in secondary and tertiary hospitals, but at home and in the community.”
In a second e-mail he also made the points:
“The reality is that we have been producing a very good comprehensive EHR from the home for years and can easily send it anywhere using HL7 messaging. We showed that at the Medinfo conference. It’s just that we have nowhere to send it to!
The problem is that Ian at NEHTA is telling me that integrating home telecare/telehealth initiatives/data is not even in his thinking in less than 4-5 years!”
Enough said in my view..we need to work to have this work and its potential firmly on the e-Health agenda!
David.
Addendum:
As if to confirm the views cited above the following appeared a day or so ago.
Seniors favor telemedicine if it keeps them independent
Older adults and family caregivers are very willing to use technologies such as telemedicine and telepharmacy that can allow them to remain independent and in their own homes, according to a report from AARP. But both groups could benefit by knowing more about technological innovations that are available today and those that are on the horizon, the report notes. Three-fourths of older adults support use of telemedicine to diagnose or monitor health conditions remotely in their home, while more than 9 in 10 support use of telepharmacy to have their doctor monitor their medications. Caregivers are also willing to use new technologies to meet their needs; but more than 8 in 10 think they will have difficulty persuading the people they care for to use these items.
More at
http://www.aarp.org/research/housing-mobility/indliving/healthy_home.html
Enough said. This is a coming thing for sure!
D.
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