Healthcare is good. Mobile Healthcare is better (and saves lives)

There are thousands of people suffering and even dying every year without anybody knowing. They have no family, friends or they are not able to reach the emergency services in time. There are millions of people with chronic conditions that don’t respect their medication. And there is an increasing problem related with chronic conditions linked to the elderly population that causes a lot of pressure on the system.

The use of mobile technologies in healthcare is changing both business (health service providers) and society (population health status) and can help reducing the number of sad stories of illness and neglect.

Phone applications could help patients to take a much more active role in the management of their condition, what is called patient engagement or patient empowerment. Mobile applications could be used to remind a patient when to take medication or some other prescribed action or to encourage a healthier lifestyle by setting reminders and call to actions to take exercises or to keep some health parameters under control.

There are a lot of medical applications available and even more health or fitness apps in the market. Lots of people get an app and then they don’t use it. Even more people don’t have a medical app in order to monitor their condition.

It is important to understand patient behavior. Most of the people listen to their doctor so they would use mobile health applications if a doctor recommended them. So, one way to increase the mobile healthcare application usage is to train healthcare professionals in the usage of mobile technologies in relation with their importance for patients, both in terms of prevention and treatments. They need to understand it’s a tool that can also help them in their everyday work. Moreover, mobile technologies represents a way to improve their efficiency and health service provider services as the patients are outside of hospitals’ walls most of the time.

In future years, healthcare applications and mobile technology will be used more broadly and will save huge amounts of money, and, even more important, could save lives. Because mobile technology and self-service helps! Individuals having access to their Personal Health Records including emergency health information, health parameters history, current and past medication are likely to be healthier and avoid emergency situations.

The healthcare professionals understand that today’s healthcare system is not sustainable anymore for a future healthier society. Aligned with the actual trends to mobility and cloud, they need to integrate new tools that help improving the processes and providing health services in an efficient way. And healthcare applications and mobile technologies are a very valuable tool to achieve those objectives. The smart phone is something we are using every day and becomes more and more part of our body, and, in order to manage our health we need to have something that’s always with us. In addition to mobile technology, there is another trend related with connected health devices (Internet of Things) and there is also a predictable and increasing role for wearables and sensors in fabrics that measure vital signs.

And it’s not just for patients and doctors: applications and mobile technology can help people find access to pharmacists, health insurance providers and some other health related information (blood donors, etc.).

On the other hand, there are also privacy concerns among citizens whether security and safety are well implemented in healthcare applications and mobile healthcare technologies. Usually, people, especially younger ones, are very receptive but education is still needed, processes and culture need to be changed. But people want to stay healthy and there is a huge chance that the big change in healthcare will come from the citizens / patients, not from the healthcare industry itself.

To respond to all these challenges, Star Storage created STATUS – a solution for electronic medical records management and patient engagement, offering a better way to enable doctors and other medical services providers’ staff to interact with patients in a secure and friendly environment.

STATUS offers to its users a series of innovative capabilities, all the features being available from a powerful but simple and user friendly interface:

• Complete medical file of the patient, built with data coming from medical systems, but also from the patient and doctors;
• Native mobile apps for integration with wearables and other portable devices for collecting health information;
• Medication scheduling, notification and tracking for patients;
• Build-in system for easy patient-doctor and doctor-doctor communication;
• Easy sharing of medical documents and investigation between patients and doctors;
• Easy integration with existing HIS/CIS systems.

With STATUS, as a patient you can:

• Keep all your health records in one place that’s secured and available to you online;
• Get your lab results, medical images, visit records and prescription history from a growing list of health service providers, labs, pharmacies who can send health information to Status on your request. Whether your health records are transferred electronically, provided on an optical disk or printed on paper, you will have everything on your electronic medical record available for use and share as needed;
• Keep your information at your fingertips and access it using any mobile device (smartphone, tablets) or any regular PC;
• Keep track of all the details – emergency information, conditions and illnesses, medications, lab results, X-Rays, CTs, scans and other images, health history, allergies, whether you’re managing acute or cronical health issues or just want to stay in control of your health and wellness;
• Be better prepared for unexpected emergencies by making your critical health information available for emergency services;
• Get more out of the doctor visits by having all the health data with you: allergies, up-to-date medication, recent health parameters readings (blood pressure, blood glucose, weight), long term history for the medical parameters and lab results, X-Rays, CTs, scans and other images;
• Track your health parameters to help monitor chronic conditions by using connected healthcare devices that make it easy to upload data to Status. By tracking your parameters, you can identify trends, patterns and stay aware and motivated for better health choices;
• Easily share health information with doctors or people you trust so that they can provide second opinions or guidance on your health problems.

To find out more about STATUS please visit status-online.ro.

See our latest product video – click here.