Care Innovations Has its Head in the Cloud

Senior caregiving benefits immensely from advances in technology. From easy blood pressure monitoring to medication reminders, both professional and family caregivers have readily available applications to help them provide better care. In this article, Gary M. Kaye of In the Boombox discusses Care Innovations' technology that helps connect a senior's caregiving circle.

Care Innovations, the joint Intel-GE health care venture is introducing an FDA approved cloud based teleheath remote monitoring solution for home based elderly patients that goes a long way to bridging the gap between the needs of institutions and clinicians and those of family members who are responsible for their care. And it does it using off the shelf hardware such as tablet computers or PC’s that may already be in their homes. Because the system does not require proprietary single purpose built hardware, Care Innovations predicts its Connect RCM system could cut deployment costs by as much as 50%. While the company has primarily focused its products towards institutions, the new system invites caregivers such as family members to participate in the system at no cost through a beta market trial program.

The FDA approval for this Cloud-based Telehealth Solution means the agency has found the system sufficiently reliable and secure so that clinicians can use it to gather sensitive data. The system will also allow connection of a wide range of other telehealth devices including blood pressure cuffs, scales, 02 sensors, and glucometers.

Connect RCM is built on the Care Innovations™ Guide platform, which is now deployed by institutions in 42 U.S. states. When deploying a program, health plans and providers will be able to offer off the shelf tablet computers. Depending on the computer proficiency of the patient, the institution will still have the option of using hardware that is locked down, in other words it cannot be altered by the user. But for most, the system will be accessible through a web portal. The family and caregivers who are not part of the institutional or clinical network will be able to access the patient’s data on their own computer, smartphone, or tablet. The application will allow family members to coordinate medical appointments, medication refills, etc.

We spoke to Marcus Grindstaff, Director of Strategic Planning & Product Development for Care Innovations about why the company felt the need to move from a propriety system to the web, and the challenge of getting FDA approval in the process, “As we moved forward (from a single purpose device) we looked at remote care and said we’ve really got to ratchet the simplicity, the ease of use, the deployability, the cost structure, improve all that by an order of magnitude. In order to do that we’ve got to land on the web and we’ve got to land on platforms that people already have in their homes. But it’s really important that as we do that, that it’s done in a way which respects the needs of medical care management from both a usability perspective as well as data integrity and efficacy.”

Grindstaff says that as home based health monitoring expands, the new Remote Care Management system provides advantages in terms of time and cost and deployment, while also reducing the complexity of adding new patients, “with the historical solution (single purpose hardware), if you want to start remotely caring for someone, from the minute they put their hand up and say ‘I want to be part of this program’, you’ve got to get a device, you’ve got to ship it to their house, many times you’ve got to get someone in there to get it working, you’ve got to push some content down to it and then several days later, in best case, in other cases a couple of weeks later, they’re now under active management. We do that for a service to our customers using the Guide appliance, and in a rush mode we can do that in two or three days anywhere in the United States, but that’s with high cost shipping. To contrast that with what you can do with a cloud-based implementation, when a member of a health plan calls up and says, ‘ I want to be part of the program’…from the minute they raise their hand, that individual they are talking to at the health plan can enroll them in the solution, send them an e-mail with the link, they can log on to the system, enroll themselves, and have their customized, member specific, condition specific content, deployed to their cloud-based client before the end of that phone call. And that’s a fifteen minute activity with no trucks and no people going to homes.”

Care Innovations is also introducing a new cost model for all Guide platform deployments, offering an enterprise annual subscription based on the number of clinicians and administrators instead of a linear per-patient cost model. Now, healthcare organizations can grow their programs in a way that supports improved clinical efficiency and makes large-scale deployments both easier and more cost-effective.

“With Connect RCM, we’re really turning telehealth on its head, elevating it to true population management that’s scalable to hundreds of thousands of individuals and their family caregivers,” said Louis Burns, chief executive officer of Care Innovations. “The system’s technical framework, which we call the Connect Care Delivery Architecture, will also serve as a backbone for upcoming clinical and non-clinical solutions in development so that we can reach across today’s existing silos of care.”

Connect RCM is also breaking the telehealth mold by giving patients receiving remote care the chance to actively include their family and friends in the care process. Patients can invite their family caregivers into a secure, web-based application called Care Innovations™ Connect Caregiver, which helps friends and family more actively and efficiently participate in the care of their loved one. Connect Caregiver is currently under limited release in preparation for a larger commercial roll-out scheduled for 2014 to the broader consumer market of family caregivers.

Care Innovations expects Connect RCM to be commercially available to United States health plans and providers in early Q4 2013, and plans to expand the offering to Canada and the United Kingdom and Ireland soon thereafter.

Gary Kaye is the Chief Content Officer of In The Boombox, a website aimed at tech savvy Baby Boomers. He writes extensively about the nexus of Baby Boomers, seniors and technology for websites including AARP and RetireUSA.net. He is currently writing a book about new technologies to assist Aging in Place.