Mobile Tools Help Patients Stay Out Of The Hospital
By Christine Kern, contributing writer
Digital Health Startup Addresses Re-Admission Issues With I’m Home!
One of healthcare’s biggest challenges is avoiding re-admissions after surgery or other procedures. When patients fail to follow instructions after a procedure and wind up being re-admitted, it costs healthcare payers billions. So much so, in fact, that preventing re-admissions has become a huge industry with service platforms and apps popping up that help patients follow aftercare and wellness instructions while away from the healthcare system.
One of these startups, Self Health Networks, has raised $5.6 million in a combination of equity and debt financing to develop its patient communications platform, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Based in San Francisco, Self Health Network contracts with healthcare providers and payers, enabling them to see significant savings if their patients follow instructions to avoid re-admissions into the system. Self Health Network joins a number of other companies providing a similar software-as-a-service, like Jiff and HealthTap, to name a couple.
Self Health’s offering, I’m Home!, is a private social network that makes it easy for patients and their caregiver to adhere to discharge instructions, share their recovery progress, and use the system’s clinical educational resources to take care of themselves. As part of the platform patients and caregivers can interactively engage with their care team, and care plan adherence and medication management are tracked daily. In addition users can quickly access and share personal health records, manage medications, and schedule follow-up appointments.
I’M HOME! enables patients and caregivers to independently store, manage and share their personal health records, so they maintain complete control. Each patient is assigned a secure fax number, which can be used to import patient records, documents images or voicemails. I’M HOME! integrates with existing Electronic Medical Record (EMR) systems to transfer patient records and discharge instructions.
Users can grant physicians access to their files thereby eliminating the time and cost of physician-to-physician or hospital-to-hospital communications when files such as lab reports, x-rays, MRIs or charts need to be shared.
The company also hopes to sell its system to large employers, which would use it to promote and monitor the wellness activities of employees. This, the thinking goes, might inspire more wellness activity, less time away from work, and less costly healthcare interventions.