There is a hunger in the healthcare industry for remote patient monitoring solutions
particularly for a technology such as the ElanzaWebphone™ and ElanzaWeb-Videophone™
- a solution that fits almost seamlessly into the existing, highly capitalized healthcare
IT environment.
Home health agencies have been looking for more cost-effective ways to provide care.
Telemedicine is a more effective way to deliver home care under certain circumstances.
It usually involves two-way electronic communication between the patient and the
formal caregiver such as a nurse or doctor. Communication can occur with the ElanzaWebphone™
or ElanzaWeb-Videophone™, a two-way interactive technology using the internet as
a medium of data transfer. This electronic face-to-face home visit also requires
some means for the care provider--who might be hundreds of miles away-- to access
patient vital signs and receive patient-initiated medical tests. The patient or
his/her in-home informal caregiver can be trained to use electronic monitoring or
test equipment that sends the relevant video snapshots or numeric patient data via
the phone line and internet to the formal caregiver.
The advantages of using the ElanzaWebphone™ telemedicine solution is clear :
- From the informatics and user perspective, the deploys as a computer and internet
appliance. From the patient and physician perspective, it deploys as a telephone.
- From a payer perspective, it deploys as a compliance device.
- From a hospital system perspective, it can be deployed as a point-of-care device
connected directly to the caregiver, serving the patient as an educational tool
and telephone communications device for disease management .
- From a pure market perspective, 65 million North Americans who suffer from chronic
illness could conceivably be connected to their payers and health care providers.
Elanza's telemedicine solution offers interventional
technology that spans the difficulties of time and distance for chronic disease
management. Elanza Technologies offers two telemedicine solutions for remote patient
monitoring:
- Intelligent Distant Patient Monitoring (IDPM)
- Wireless Human Informatics Management (WHIM)
IDPM is readily available as a bundled solution with the ElanzaWebphone™ and marketed
by Elanza Technologies inc. in partnership with New IT Technologies Inc. of Canada.
The solution has already been implemented across a broad spectrum of patients suffering
from chronic illness and has proved to be extremely successful in providing Telemedicine
services.
IDPM provides the necessary tools of enabling patient/professional exchange of critical
clinical information maintaining clinical monitoring at a distance. IDPM provides
ready to use clinical protocols such as cardiac, COPD, Cardiac surgery, surgery
follow-up, labile hypertension, diabetes, asthma and high risk pregnancy. IDPM can
be deployed rapidly and scaled up to meet incoming demand for services as well as
increasing monitoring staff. IDPM provides confidentiality, security, robustness
and comfort for Telemedicine for reaching patients in the comfort of their home
providing Telemedicine services.
The IDPM system is a multi-agent system where each component is an intelligent and
autonomous agent collaborating with other agents to achieve the goal set forward
by the treatment protocol. At each end of this new therapeutic relationship there
is a personal agent whose main goal is to help their respective user with the task
of either engaging the treatment protocol activities or manage the monitoring of
patients. The overall system architecture is presented in Figure above.
Our IDPM Partner
The WHIM solution was conceived and developed by Elanza Technologies Inc. in a strategic
alliance with manufacturers and developers of wireless wellness monitoring devices
used in WHIM. The solution is readily available with the ElanzaWebphone™ technology
and has been implemented and tested with several patients and proven to be reliable,
robust and successful in providing telemedicine services to patients with various
health conditions and chronic diseases.
The WHIM technology allows for monitoring health informatics over the Internet using
wireless wellness monitoring devices connected to the ElanzaWebphone™. The solution
is ideal for companies involved with patient care management techniques and for
providing chronic illness monitoring services at a cost effective price, and achieving
savings both for the medical insurance industry and the patient. With this solution,
data collected from the patient is delivered to the professional across a wireless
infrastructure into a database to be mined for the purpose of making diagnostic
decisions. Wireless wellness monitoring devices currently available include BP monitor,
Weight Scale, Gloucometer and Pulse-Oxy meter. The solution allows the professional
to monitor the acuity of patient condition, chronic reoccurring maintenance measurements,
preventative monitoring and patient interest/curiosity (vitals).