Humetrix Invited to Present its iBlueButton® Mobile Solutions on the Main Stage of the Health Data Initiative Forum III, Health Datapalooza.
Humetrix is pleased to announce that it will be presenting its award winning iBlueButton® mobile apps on the main stage of the third edition of Health Data Initiative Forum, Health Datapalooza, which will be held at the Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C. June 5-6, 2012. Humetrix’ iBlueButton live demo presentation will take place on Tuesday, June 5 at 11:00 am.
The Health Data Initiative (HDI) originally launched in 2010 by the Institute of Medicine and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is a public-private collaboration. HDI encourages innovators to utilize health data to develop applications which raise awareness of health and health system performance while sparking community action to improve health. The HDI Forum III, Health Datapalooza, will feature a world class group of data experts, technology developers and entrepreneurs, health care system leaders, policy makers and community advocates to support innovative applications of health and health data.
The Humetrix iBlueButton apps leverage and optimize one of the federal government’s most successful health data initiatives - the Blue Button® initiative - by capitalizing on the wide use of patient and provider mobile devices and the Humetrix patented device to device communication platform.
Initiated by the VA, DoD and CMS, Blue Button has already been adopted by over 900,000 Veterans, service members, and Medicare beneficiaries. Following the U.S. Federal government leadership and commitment to "Putting the I in Health IT", more than 60 private organizations have taken the Blue Button pledge. Additionally, more than 200 private insurers participating in the Federal Employees Health Benefit Program (FEHBP) are now required to offer a Blue Button functionality to the over 8 million individuals covered by the FEHBP program. Also, since April of this year State HIEs are strongly encouraged by the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) for Health Care IT to offer patients direct access to their health records with the use of Blue Button.
In offering an easy to use, de-facto clinical summary standard now deployed nationwide through the public and private sectors, Blue Button provides a powerful means for health information exchange (HIE). iBlueButton, complementing the query and directed models of HIE (offered to providers by regional HIEs and the Direct project), delivers through a mobile form of "consumer-mediated exchange", a mobile HIE solution for anytime, anywhere access and exchange of up to date health information at the point of care.
With iBlueButton, patients can automatically access and download their Blue Button records from any Blue Button enabled portals onto their mobile devices, and under their own control share with their physicians their up to date health information at the point of care. Also offering an easy to use, but highly secure, 2-way device to device communication, providers using the iBlueButton Professional app can in return, directly transfer to their patients a clinical summary of the visit, imaging studies, test results or patient instructions at the time of the clinical encounter.
The Humetrix live iBlueButton HDI Forum presentation will show patient and provider use of the apps during a clinical encounter, and focus on the role the iBlueButton mobile HIE platform can now play to significantly accelerate access and exchange of health information at the point of care for the optimum care coordination required for cost effective care in either fee for service on ACOs settings. In December 2011, the ONC recognized iBlueButton with an Investing in Innovation award for its Safe Transition of Care Challenge. iBlueButton indeed provides a powerful mobile HIE solution when providers are either not connected to the same HIE, cannot immediately query another provider system, or cannot securely email another provider through the Direct protocol to retrieve critically needed up to date clinical summaries or tests results.
Available for use by all Veterans with a direct link to download the apps from the VA website since the beginning of the year, the iBlueButton Veterans smartphone app lets Veterans automatically access, download and directly exchange with their physicians Blue Button records from MyHealtheVet, MyMedicare.gov, TRICARE Online and private plan portals offering a blue Button download.
Since April, the iBlueButton and iBlueButton Professional apps are available from iTunes to Medicare and TRICARE beneficiaries and any other consumers and providers. The iBlueButton® apps break new ground in health information exchange and mobile health. Until now, mobile apps have either provided “Patient-only solutions”, for their sole use at home or on the go, and not useful at the point of care, and "physician-only solutions" with partial or in some cases full-featured access to single EMR systems. What Humetrix now provides is an innovative combined app system for patients and physicians to use together during a clinical encounter to immediately access and exchange up to date health records. The system is comprised of the patient smartphone iBlueButton® or iBlueButton® Veterans apps, and a companion physician tablet iBlueButton® Professional app which together allow the patient and physician to easily and securely exchange medical records at the point of care. Together these apps enable patients to serve as "mobile connectors" to their own records between physicians who may otherwise have limited ways of exchanging medical records in real time when caring for their patients in their office, or the emergency room.
To quote David Blumenthal in his recent New England Journal of Medicine‘s Perspective column entitled, Performance Improvement in Health Care- Seizing the Moment: "...care coordination and cost management depend on having accurate, timely, and actionable information in real time at the point of decision making. The availability and effective use of health information technology are therefore essential to improving health system performance1..." Mobile technology in the hands of both patients and providers can deliver such care coordination and cost management solutions, and iBlueButton will be seizing the opportunity at the HDI Forum III to help making a difference in the quality and cost of heath care right now.
1. NEJM 366;21 pp1953-55. May 24, 2012
About Humetrix (Exhibit Booth # 68)
Humetrix has been pioneering the development of innovative consumer-centered mobile technology applications over the past 15 years which have been deployed around the world. In healthcare, Humetrix’ mobile health solutions are now applied to optimize new health care delivery models by allowing healthcare providers and their patients to automatically and securely access and exchange individual on-line records using smart portable devices such as smart or NFC phones, other NFC enabled devices, tablets or USB flash drives. Patient-centered and individually controlled, Humetrix mHealth technology offers easy to use and immediately implementable health information exchange solutions from any point of care to deliver more cost-effective coordinated health care.
