Easing chronic disease management with mHealth
Blood glucose tests. Careful diet planning. Medications. Appointments. Care management plans. Daily exercise. This is the life of a diabetes patient. And if you’re thinking that’s a lot to remember – you’re right. Managing diabetes properly often requires a combination of the treatments named above. When adding these complex care plans to other life stresses, one can see how easy it is to slip up.
Fortunately, converging technologies – devices, applications, data analytics and cloud – are bringing new opportunities for clinicians, care teams and patients to better manage chronic disease care. Mobile Health solutions, or mHealth for short, are the result of this convergence, enabling patients to be more proactive in self-management. By improving education, encouraging and simplifying care compliance, and promoting positive health outcomes, mHealth is helping drive the change needed in chronic disease management.
Earlier this year Health Choice Network together with Microsoft, TracFone Wireless and MobiMedix launched a mHealth pilot program to tackle key chronic care challenges – education, encouragement and simplification. Using mobile technology and new care coordination techniques, pilot participants engage more frequently with clinicians, receiving the ongoing support critical for diabetes management.
The pilot program leverages the Microsoft Mobile Health Management Solution paired with a Windows phone, a custom, branded app from MobiMedix, and voice and data services from TracFone. Together these technologies offer an easy-to-use tool with a familiar interface, built on a more secure platform, which enables individuals to fully engage in managing their health.
In addition to the core hardware and applications, Health Choice Network’s team of experienced healthcare professionals use a variety of motivational communications in the program. These include targeted health reminders via text message, links to important information, scheduling of calendar appointments, secure messaging and lifestyle applications designed to encourage tracking of key measures for blood sugar, blood pressure, weight and activity.
We believe this solution will be highly impactful for participants in a number of ways. By simplifying care activities and providing useful information to support daily decisions, the program goal – improving key measures of diabetes patient health – is within reach.
Follow the blog series as we further explore mobile health solutions, discuss how technology can improve the lives of thousands and share results from this mHealth pilot. We’ll publish the next post in the series in the coming weeks.
Health Choice Network is a recognized national leader in health information technology and financial services to primary, dental, and mental health community health centers and safety net providers. Health Choice Network uses state-of-the-art systems to capture, analyze, and leverage data, and promote meaningful use of electronic health record information to improve quality and access to care. We are a Health Center Controlled Network with 39 primary, dental, and mental health community health centers members in 19 states. Our services support more than one million patients and over 2 million visits annually.
Visit www.hcnetwork.org to learn more about Health Choice Network. For more on how Microsoft is helping the healthcare industry innovate, visit Microsoft in Health or contact us via email, Facebook, or Twitter.
