Networking: Portals for medical care

A patient refills her prescription for Diuril online, a high-blood-pressure medication, without having to walk down the street in the summer heat and wait for the local pharmacist to fill out the prescription.

Though rare today, Internet-based "patient portals," like the one at Detroit's Henry Ford Health System, which is a network of 24 primary-care centers that makes it one of America's largest healthcare systems, will become increasingly common in the future.

"Hospitals across the country are seeking a more comprehensive approach to patient portal development that encompasses clinical information," said Peter Kuhn, president of Medseek, the Solvang, Calif.-based network technology developer.

Using the ".net technology" developed by Microsoft, patient portal platforms can link directly to the electronic medical records of hospitals, enabling patients to update their information, including emergency contact numbers; obtain personalized medical information; ask billing questions; renew and refill prescriptions; request results from lab tests and receive automatic updates.

The Ford health system's portal is expected to complete more than 100,000 transactions for 45,000 registered users, Kuhn said.

Doctors and other healthcare professionals see portals like these as a key to preventative healthcare. According to the American Heart Association, preventive healthcare services are an integral part of any corporate healthcare plan.

During the last six months there has been a national push for physicians to convert their paper records to electronic medical records (EMR) to facilitate preventive care. President Bush, during his State of the Union address, even asked Congress to "make wider use of electronic records and other health information technology to help control costs and reduce dangerous medical errors."

Doctors are being encouraged to switch to EMR by the feds -- as well as state governments, patients and insurance companies. However, the total number of physicians in private practice who have converted to EMR remain below 10 percent.

With more than 200 different EMR and practice management software vendors to choose from, doctors are faced with the challenge of having to sort through the huge number of vendors to find a product that fits their specific needs.

Private-sector deals are helping move that number up, however.

EMR Experts Inc., a provider of electronic medical record and practice management software solutions, today announced a new partnership with Bizmatics, Inc. to market electronic medical record software, PrognoCIS.

The company said the addition of PrognoCIS EMR to EMR Experts' product line will provide physicians with more options -- including linking medical records to a patient portal, a physician portal, an executive dashboard and medical-history kiosks. The software is available as both an application service provider (ASP) and in-house client-server solution.

By generating electronic records at the point of care, PrognoCIS brings efficiency to operations. The technology includes Internet, Intranet, wireless, voice-activation and pen-based solutions, according to Chris Ferguson, president and chief executive officer of Bizmatics, based in San Diego.

"Online health sites are not only less expensive, they are convenient," said a spokeswoman for LiveHealthier.com, an online nutrition site for consumers. "People want to be healthy and combat all of the ills that go along with poor diet and lack of exercise, but they want it to fit neatly into their schedule."

The site fills an interesting niche of the preventive-care world -- providing personal care and nutritionist services for $20 a month. The site "provides fitness experts, nutritionists and health advice available at the tip of your fingers."

Sites like that also allow members to track their movement, nutrition, successes and challenges and then share them with co-workers, health professionals and a global community of people that share similar interests and goals. "Hiring a personal trainer and/or a nutritionist is an advantage not everyone can afford," said the spokeswoman for Livehealthier.com.

Copyright 2006 by United Press International

Related stories:

Home blood pressure monitoring plus Web-based pharmacy care helps improve blood pressure control
Patients with hypertension who monitored their blood pressure from home and received Web-based pharmacist care showed greater improvement in blood pressure control than patients who received usual care, according to a study in the June 25 issue of JAMA.
Wanted: 40,000 more health IT professionals
If the U.S. healthcare system moves toward wider adoption of advanced information technology systems to control health care costs, reduce medical errors and improve patient care, it will need at least 40,000 additional health IT professionals – or almost 40 percent more than U.S. hospitals now are estimated to employ.
Treadmill exercise retrains brain and body of stroke victims
People who walk on a treadmill even years after stroke damage can significantly improve their health and mobility, changes that reflect actual "rewiring" of their brains, according to research spearheaded at Johns Hopkins.
Class of diabetes drugs carries significant cardiovascular risks
A class of oral drugs used to treat type 2 diabetes may make heart failure worse, according to an editorial published online in Heart Wednesday by two Wake Forest University School of Medicine faculty members.
Research Ethics Committees identify and correct problems in applications to do cancer trials
Researchers running cancer trials are often critical of the Research Ethics Committee (REC) process they have to go through to get their trials approved, complaining that it's too complex, burdensome and sometimes unreasonable. In the UK only 17% of research study applications are given immediate favourable opinion by RECs.
Even without dementia, mental skills decline years before death
A new study shows that older people's mental skills start declining years before death, even if they don't have dementia. The study is published in the August 27, 2008, online issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
Study reveals gap in HIV testing knowledge among college students
Most college students understand how they can prevent the transmission of HIV but are less knowledgeable about HIV testing, according to a new University of Georgia study.
Scientists' findings may lead to new drug-abuse treatments
Increased connections among brain cells caused by excessive drug use may represent the body's defense mechanism to combat addiction and related behaviors, scientists at UT Southwestern Medical Center have found.

News discussion:

Technology news