How safe is that app? App released today is the first to be registered as a Class I medical device by the MHRA

UK charity draws attention to the regulation of health apps and publishes guidance document to help health professionals, organisations, patients and industry

10 January 2012, London – A new app, Mersey Burns, has been released on to the market that represents a first in the UK – it has been registered with the MHRA as a Class I medical device as per the EU Medical Device Directive.   To coincide with this, d4 have simultaneously published a new guidance document to help draw further attention to the issue of health app regulation and provide practical guidance to both users and manufacturers of apps for the healthcare market.

Health professionals make considerable use of mobile phones during their working day, as do their patients.  As the popularity of running software applications on mobile devices continues to increase, we anticipate that the use of apps to aid medical diagnosis and treatment will gain in popularity with a corresponding increase in risk to the general public.  Specific regulations that accompany this nascent technology are in their infancy, but should not be ignored.

For all stakeholders concerned, it is in our collective interest to support responsible use of this new technology. It will take one high profile failing to cause a loss of trust that can take months, if not years, to rebuild.  In their guidance document, Regulation of health apps: a practical guide, d4 make the following recommendations:

1. Health professionals should carefully consider the risks when using apps to determine a patient’s care.
2. Developers should test their apps thoroughly and maintain adequate technical documentation to evidence this.
3. Publishers should ensure compliance with the necessary regulations before releasing apps on to the market.
4. Organisations should investigate ways to manage the use of apps by their employees, and put in place mechanisms to identify those apps that are deemed fit for professional use.
5. Patients should examine carefully the source of the apps they use to manage their health.  Within Europe, health apps that influence a patient’s treatment should carry the CE mark to demonstrate their conformity with the appropriate regulation.

“mHealth is a new industry and the regulatory environment is evolving,” said James Sherwin-Smith, CEO of d4. ”Regulators are necessary to safeguard the public and uphold confidence in markets that would otherwise be open to potential abuse. But regulations also need to support, and not stifle, innovation. The regulatory issues that surround health apps are complex and open to interpretation. We hope that this guide provides a useful steer for individuals and organisations alike.”

Solutions’ Ease of Use – Key to Adoptability and Patient Adherence

Scottsdale, AZ- Jan 9, 2012- MedApps, Inc., a leading mHealth (mobile telehealth) innovator is pleased to announce its alliance with MedMinder to bring connected, remote medication management to MedApps’ product and service offerings of flexible ScalableCare services.

Both companies have led the way in their respective areas of expertise within the telehealth market with affordable, easy to use, patient-centered remote monitoring solutions.

“Our partnering with MedMinder is very synergistic and our products compliment each other extremely well”, says Kent Dicks, Founder and CEO of MedApps. “The challenge with any prescribed therapy for patient care is compliance – whether that’s a patient taking their blood pressure or glucose readings on a daily basis, or taking their medication when they’re supposed to – and if it doesn’t get done, the caregivers’ efforts to manage patient conditions are ineffective.”

Dicks continues, “Our clients’ satisfaction has validated the fact that we’ve gone a long way in helping doctors and nurses gather the accurate and timely biometric data they need to more effectively mange patient health – and we think that MedMinder provides an equally valuable solution for the medication management side of things.”

Like MedApps, MedMinder provides products designed to keep patients connected to their care providers with a focus on ease of use to ensure a high degree of adoptability from the patient. MedMinder offers a unique solution to medication compliance through its “smart cellular pillbox”: Maya. On the surface, Maya appears to be an ordinary daily pill organizer, but it’s fully loaded with innovative features that effectively, yet simply enable medication management.

MedMinder pill dispenser can track patients’ dosage activity and deliver optional medication reminders or alerts to the user if medication is not taken within an assigned timeframe or if an incorrect medication compartment is inadvertently accessed. Additional options allow the patient’s family and care providers to be contacted if necessary to offer a more cohesive support system. MedMinder keeps records of patient medication activities and can provide access to reports for the user, their family and their caregivers via the Internet, email and text notification.

Combining MedMinders’ capabilities with MedApps’ supply of consistent, near-real time biometric data will deliver the most robust coordinated solution for medication management on the market.  Clinicians will have the ability to ascertain the effects of a given medication for an individual patient more rapidly – making adjustments and / or intervening when necessary.

“We are very excited about partnering with MedApps and integrating into their remote health monitoring platform – they are a true innovator in the field, said MedMinder Founder and CEO Eran Shavelsky.  “The companies’ philosophies of providing simple to use, transparent technology is a perfect fit. Our solutions’ ability to cost-effectively improve medication adherence and deliver a consistent supply of clinical and behavioral data will be unparalleled in medication management.”

This latest product offering is another illustration of the dynamic and scalable integration that is made possible by the MedApps CloudCare™ platform. MedApps has built a unique infrastructure for health information delivery that allows a variety of OEM devices to be integrated into a remote monitoring program very quickly with a minimum of coordination time.  CloudCare delivers the first true “Plug & Play” platform in the telehealth field.

About MedMinder

About MedApps

MedApps provides innovative technology solutions for the collection, transmission and remote management of patient health data. MedApps utilizes wireless and machine-to-machine technologies, hardware, software, and cloud computing to efficiently connect patients with their care providers and electronic health records. MedApps is an acknowledged innovator in the field of remote health monitoring, most recently recognized with a 2011 Edison Award in the product category of Health, Wellness & Safety. MedApps is a member of Continua, an industry consortium setting Medical Device Interoperability Standards worldwide. For more information, please visit www.medapps.com.

iPLATO Healthcare, the leader in mHealth, reported that patient response to a new local support service for COPD patients in Greenwich has been overwhelmingly positive. Over the last few weeks, hundreds of people with COPD have signed up to receive alerts, advice and signposting about how to remain in control of their health and stay well in the comfort of their own home. NHS Greenwich provides this service to patients across the Borough using the iPLATO’s technology platform.

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is an umbrella term used to describe a group of progressive airways diseases including chronic bronchitis and emphysema. There is no cure for COPD but a lot can be done to relieve its symptoms. Preventative interventions include stop smoking and various forms of medication and the flu jab. Contributing factors to symptoms worsening include changing weather conditions. According to the NHS Information Department, an average hospitalisation costs the tax payer £1,946. NHS Greenwich estimates that COPD is the cause of 1 in 20 hospital admissions in their part of London.

NHS Greenwich aims to provide a localised, personalised and holistic service to help patients stay in control of their condition and to avoid unnecessary hospital admissions. To achieve this aim the patient messaging service will – in addition to communicating known triggers such as local weather changes and invitation to preventative services – also help with practical details such as getting necessary medication from the GP before bank holidays and other times when less support may be available.

Initial feedback has been very positive and encouraging: “The COPD support service is a brilliant idea, even though I am normally on top of my condition an extra reminder would help,” says one patient who enrolled to the service after receiving a text invitation from her GP surgery.

“It is important for patients with COPD to be supported to manage their condition and feel more in control of their illness. This new service enables patients with COPD to get the right information at the right time to do this. It will provide the essential support, information and advice that is required for people with COPD to stay well,” says Dr Eugenia Lee, GP.

Jackie Davidson, Associate Director of Public Health says: “In Greenwich, there are over 3,000 people that have been diagnosed with COPD and about another 4,000 people that are undiagnosed and untreated because they don’t recognise the symptoms. This patient messaging service is a great example of how we can use our local knowledge to help people manage their condition to remain well. We hope to bring real benefit and extend the service to even more people.”

Doctors across Tayside can now download an application to their mobile phone that helps them prescribe appropriate drugs.

Pages from the app.

They will be able to get important information on medicines and their use in the same way that they access music tracks.

Doctors can call up necessary information on medicines and their use while at a patient’s bedside or any other location where they might not have immediate access to a computer.

The technology is only available in Tayside and has been developed by local health professionals working with IT experts.

There has been a lot of interest from health professionals beyond Tayside keen to exploit the technology to suit their local needs.

The app can also be downloaded to an iPod Touch or iPadand has received positive comments from junior doctors involved in initial testing.

Read the full article HERE

Targeted Mobile Wireless Technology to Achieve Maximum Healthcare Outcomes
in Remote Care Monitoring

DALLAS, Jan. 5, 2011 Patients suffering from diabetes, hypertension, heart disease and other chronic conditions may soon be able to enjoy the benefits of improved health information transfer. Using wireless technologies, AT&T and MedApps, a recognized leader in the development of wireless mobile remote patient monitoring solutions, announced today the inclusion of MedApps in AT&T’s ForHealth portfolio of mHealth, cloud-based, and telehealth products and solutions.

The ForHealth product ecosystem is intended to streamline healthcare data flow and care delivery and contribute to improved disease management, particularly for those with chronic conditions. Along with other key providers and their products, the inclusion of MedApps’ CloudCare(TM) product line will broaden the mHealth solution suite offered by AT&T, enhancing AT&T’s abilities to offer turnkey solutions for the healthcare industry.

“MedApps’ focus on cloud computing and open platform architecture, allowing connection of multiple clinical devices to a single plug-and-play hub, is highly aligned with AT&T’s vision,” said Randall Porter, assistant vice president, AT&T ForHealth Solutions. “It will help AT&T offer mHealth solutions that are user agnostic and universally accessible, despite carrier, device type and operating-system. AT&T is excited to work with MedApps to provide a comprehensive remote care monitoring solution suite to our healthcare customers.”

AT&T will provide 3G connectivity to the MedApps solution suite, and will also be co-selling MedApps’ remote care monitoring hub and enterprise back-end solutions, bundling MedApps with existing AT&T remote care applications, clinical peripherals and devices.

The MedApps solution suite begins with HealthPAL, a dedicated portable device that uses a combination of embedded cellular and Bluetooth technologies to automatically transmit readings from retail monitors like glucose meters, blood pressure monitors, scales, and pulse oximeters directly to a patient’s electronic medical record (EMR), providing caregivers with ready access to the latest patient data for monitoring and review. For patients with chronic conditions, such as diabetes, fast access to the most current biometric data can improve patient compliance, help stabilize patients and drive down the cost of crisis care. HealthPAL provides a hands-off telehealth solution that is easy to operate for users of all ages and technological skill levels.

On the caregiver side, MedApps offers the HealthCOM portal, a web-based application that allows healthcare professionals to remotely review and manage the data collected by HealthPAL, and provides integration with other enterprise EMRs. HealthCOM is accessible from any place with Internet connectivity. The entire MedApps infrastructure is tied together by its patent-pending CloudCare(TM) platform.

“In looking at healthcare, and disease management, it is important to remember that different subsets of the population have much different rates of utilization of healthcare resources,” said Kent Dicks, CEO of MedApps. “Each of these groups also has different demographical characteristics that affect its use of technology – and one solution does not fit all. Therefore, multiple solutions are needed to engage different populations in order to achieve the best compliance and adherence rate possible. This is an essential and highly attainable way to reduce healthcare costs immediately.”

• Continued healthcare drive through NHS approved messaging platform
• Modular service designed to allow better patient care and more effective internal resourcing through improved communications
• Opportunity to improve attendance rates, free up appointment slots and cut the cost of missed appointments by up to 38%
• Easier communications with patients and employees through familiar, everyday medium of mobile

Orange today announced the launch of its second new service specifically aimed at the UK healthcare sector. The Orange Health Gateway allows hospitals, doctors’ surgeries and pharmacies to use mobile communications to transform patient services and become more efficient through a selection of two-way messaging modules.

The Orange Health Gateway can help every healthcare organisation get messages to patients and employees quickly and easily, whether to remind them of upcoming appointments, improve the communication of test results, speed up the resourcing of replacement nurses or improve patient adherence to medication. The applications are available through a simple, secure web environment, which allows mobile technology to become an integral part of the way healthcare providers communicate with patients and employees.

Orange Health Gateway powered by iPLATO

The Orange Health Gateway is available as a series of modules that can be selected to meet healthcare customers’ specific needs.

The Appointment Reminders module enables organisations to send timely, personalised appointment reminders to patients and manage cancellations and confirmations, which could reduce the number of wasted appointment slots by up to 38%¹.  With missed appointments estimated to be costing the NHS £790 million per year², this module alone could lead to savings of £300 million per year.  Appointment Reminders has a very low start-up cost and can be deployed within days.

Additional Messaging modules from the Orange Health Gateway can also enable healthcare providers to:

• Track and communicate routine medical results to patients
• Distribute emergency contact messages to employees in case of an incident
• Send and receive employee messages to help with effective resourcing, particularly when reaching out to contract staff
• Send out bespoke messages by working with Orange and iPLATO to create a tailored solution for their specific needs, for example creating automated messages for employees or patients

Michael Lawrence, Head of Corporate Propositions at Orange UK said, “Orange Health Gateway offers the healthcare sector the opportunity to improve patient services and deliver real savings by capitalising on the everyday use of mobile. It enables healthcare providers to make better use of time and resources, at a time when efficiency gains are front of mind. As well as helping to provide excellent patient care through shorter waiting lists and quicker updates, healthcare organisations can also transform their entire communications system, proving that technology and partnerships can enable real change.  With minimal management commitments combined with maximum efficiency and cost savings, Orange Health Gateway will ease the lives of patients and professionals across the healthcare sector alike.

“Orange Health Gateway comes hot on the heels of our first healthcare solution in the UK, Orange smartnumbers, and demonstrates the Orange commitment, as part of Everything Everywhere, to providing the very best products and services for all types of businesses”.

iPLATO Healthcare powers the Orange Health Gateway, as well as providing professional services to help healthcare organisations launch and evolve their eHealth services. The platform is hosted on N3 and complies with the NHS’s data security and information government requirements.

The innovative use of modern technology to promote health and prevent illness is the subject of a national conference being held in Inverness next month.

P4 Digital Healthcare Convention

Anyone interested in attending or finding out more can visit the event website at http://www.digitalhealthcareevent.com/

Doctors, researchers, technical experts and business people will share their expertise at the P4 Digital Healthcare Convention, organised by Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE), on Friday, October 1, at the city’s Eden Court Theatre.

HIE believes the Highlands and Islands has a unique potential to create a new cluster of healthcare businesses specialising in developing and using technology to deliver both prevention and treatment over large distances.

As a largely mountainous region with a widely-scattered mainland population and almost 100 inhabited islands, it is also a location which stands to benefit most from healthcare innovation.

Dr Steven Dodsworth, Head of Life Sciences with HIE, explained: “P4 is a term used by health professionals to describe an approach which combines prevention, prediction, personalisation and participation.

“We’re particularly interested in the role technology can play in helping people take charge of their own healthcare in a rural region like the Highlands and Islands.

“Health professionals, technologists and business people all see telehealthcare, as it’s called, as a growth area for the coming years and we believe the Highlands and Islands is ideally placed to reap both the health benefits and economic growth.

“Life sciences is a growing sector across the world which is already worth over £130m and supports around 1,800 jobs in the Highlands and Islands alone.

“We see telehealthcare as an important niche in that sector which can develop significantly over the coming years.”

October’s convention is a follow-up to a highly successful Telehealthcare summit which the development organisation held in the summer.

That event helped define a vision for developing a new telehealthcare industry in Scotland, with HIE playing a central role in helping forge collaborative links between the worlds of healthcare, science and business.

It also highlighted new equipment to monitor road accident casualties, life saving diagnostic devices for mountain rescue teams, and software to enable more care at home for people with long-term conditions.

The upcoming convention is aimed at healthcare professionals, industry and patient groups and has been planned to be highly participative.

In addition to hearing expert speakers, those attending will be able to raise questions and share their own knowledge in small workshops throughout the day.

Speakers: “Why here, why now?”

• Ruaraidh MacNeil (HIE): The Inverness Campus Development
• Professor Alasdair Munro (Centre for Health Science): A Centre for P4 Healthcare?
• Professor Dave Godden (University of Aberdeen): The Dot Rural Project
• Andrew Fowlie (chair of the Moray Community Health and Social Care Partnership): Why change is needed
• Dr Doug McKendrick & Professor Grant Cumming (NHS Grampian): P4 digital healthcare in practice
• Andrew Milner (H-I Network): Open Innovation

Workshops: “When worlds collide”

• Healthcare meets the creative industries: hosted by Glasgow School of Art. A vision of Scottish telehealthcare in 2020 suggests a major role for the creative industries in healthcare.
• Web science meets P4: hosted by Professor Grant Cumming (NHS Grampian & UHI). The World Wide Web has become a central feature in our lives and will become of increasing importance in P4 healthcare.
• P4 and PR: hosted by Webber Shandwick. Effective communication will be necessary to realise the benefits of P4 teleheathcare. This workshop will explore the issues involved in such communication.

Anyone interested in attending or finding out more can visit the event website at http://www.digitalhealthcareevent.com/

iPLATO Healthcare, the leader in mHealth, announced today that two practices at the Dunbar Medical Centre in east Lothian recently became the first GP Surgeries in Scotland to launch iPLATO Patient Care Messaging. In response to patient preferences for mobile communication in primary care the system is expected to reduce waiting times for GP appointments and enable GP-led, personalised and timely public health promotion.

According to Edinburgh Evening News last year around 124,000 people missed a hospital or GP appointment across NHS Lothian at a cost of nearly £17 million. Ultimately funded by NHS Lothian this initiative seeks to improve access to primary care services as well as drive efficiencies and reduce costs.

In a statement from the two GP surgeries, the partners say “We are pleased to have the opportunity to pilot this service on behalf of East Lothian CHP (Community Health Partnership), to see if we can improve communication between practice and patients. It should make it easier to remind our patients when check-ups are due, and so lead to improved care for long-term conditions which need regular review. Receiving reminders is free of charge to the patient. We encourage all our patients to hand in their mobile phone number to us so that they can benefit from this service.”

“Launching in Lothian with two of the practices at the Dunbar Medical Centre is a big, long term, opportunity for us but also for patients, healthcare professionals and payers in Scotland,” says Tobias Alpsten, Managing Director at iPLATO. “Across a patient population comparable to Scotland’s, iPLATO Patient Care Messaging freed up more than 100,000 GP appointments last year through SMS cancellations alone. Based on our experiences elsewhere, iPLATO Patient Care Messaging should be able to save NHS Scotland more than 200,000 GP appointments per year if deployed nationally. The smart public health promotion enabled by iPLATO  Patient Care Messaging further adds to its appeal.”