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.”

Marty Cooper, the “Father of the Mobile Phone”, did a fantastic job on his 60 Minute Interview tonight (Sunday, May 23, 2010).

During that interview, Marty pointed out that one of the obvious future direction of Mobile Phone technology was in Healthcare.

If you want to see the full interview Follow this link

Medics’ mobile phone ban ends

Published Date: 12 January 2010

A TOTAL ban on NHS Lothian staff using their mobile phones in hospitals has been lifted. Health bosses decided to revise the ruling given the importance of instant communication between workers to improve efficiency of care. There are still strict guidelines on when and where phones can be used.

Evening News (final edition) p.9

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Follow the link for more photos and videos of the Mobile Healthcare Industry Summit

London, December  10^th 2009.

The National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery announced today that it is launching a new service to support people with epilepsy.  This innovative service, offered in partnership with iPLATO Healthcare, aims to help the hospital’s patients improve the management of their condition using web and mobile based technology. The service will offer medication support for people with epilepsy with the option of alerts for carers, as well as helping them monitor their overall condition through a web based patient diary.

To start with, Mobile and Internet Support for People with Epilepsy will offer:

Medication Support – will use text messaging to remind patients to take their medication. Patients will be able to choose their level of personalised medication support depending on preference and medical / social need. The most intense medication support will require the patient to confirm that they have taken their medication by reply text that, if not received, will send an alert to their nominated carer.  Medication Support will also support medication changes by reminding people to adjust dosages when planned changes to medication are due to take place.

Patient Diary – aims to assist with recording of essential information for epilepsy monitoring. Using a secure, password protected, web interface patients will have the opportunity to record seizures, injuries and medication profiles if they wish. The web service will also allow them to update some of this information directly via their mobile phone.  Patients will be able to run reports over a specific period and bring this information along to their consultations.

Statement from Professor John Duncan, Professor of Neurology:

“Most individuals with epilepsy have to take medication regularly in order to achieve the best possible control of their seizures but remembering to take medication can be problematic for some. Taking medication accurately can become quite complicated when it is adjusted as this is usually done in gradual steps over a period of time. We hope that the additional support provided by this service will help some people to manage their medication more effectively which could help to improve the control of their epilepsy.”

Statement from Anthony Linklater, Epilepsy Specialist Nurse:

“After a long period of preparation we are excited to be launching this service which we believe will be of great benefit to our patients. We have developed a holistic medication support package using both mobile phone technology and the internet which will support people to manage their medications better. If the service is positively evaluated, we are hopeful that it will grow in scope and sophistication over the next few years.”

“We believe there is a huge need for low cost telehealth services in the United Kingdom and elsewhere” says Tobias Alpsten, CEO iPLATO Healthcare. “We have always struggled with the notion that telehealth should require custom built hardware. By delivering a service to devices that patients already own we dramatically reduce costs, reduce barriers to usage while delivering solid health outcomes”.

Funded by UCB Pharma Ltd and the National Hospital Development Foundation for the next year, this service will be free to epilepsy patients of the National Hospital of Neurology and Neurosurgery. Patients can sign up by contacting the Epilepsy Specialist Nurse. Healthcare providers, payers and individuals who are interested in this service (outside the National Hospital) should get in touch with iPLATO Healthcare.

Find out more about iPlato

“Ahead of Wednesday’s pre-Budget report, the PM said “efficiency savings” would help to save £12bn over four years – £3bn more than planned in the Budget.”

“This culture of excess must change and will change.”

He added that the government would use technological advances to make services more user-friendly and cheaper.

As an example, sending text messages to remind patients about GP appointments could help save up to £600m a year wasted on missed visits.

Read this report noticing the part healthcare technology can play here

Two companies offering solutions for this are Felltech and their Outbox SMS and iPlato with their GP messaging service

The technology is there and ready it is just down to the NHS to implement it.

Judging at the Mobile Healthcare Industry Summit was tough as there were many great applications and solutions.

In the end there had to be a winner and on the day MedApps won out

Kent Dicks from MedApps collecting his award

Second Prize went to Patients Know Best with the website that allows a patient to manage their health care by working with their clinical team.

Patient Knows Best - Dr Mohammad Al-Ubaydli gets second place

A special mention was made for Sinseprod who are doing great work in Africa utilising mobile phones to deliver healthcare in remote and rural areas.

Dr Adesina Iluyemi of Sinseprod with the judges

MedAps Website – Mobile Wireless Health Monitoring

Patient Knows Best Website  – Manage Your Health

SinseProd – Dr Adesina Iluyemi Profile

[Posted: Mon 19/10/2009]

Migrainemonitor.ie, the innovative website developed by Irishhealth.com has won the ‘Best Use of Information Technology’ in the The 2009 Irish Healthcare Awards. The initiative aims to support and help minimise the impact of migraine on sufferers, family, work and social life. It was developed with the support from the Migraine Association of Ireland (MAI). 

The system uses technology to allow patients better manage their migraines, by quickly and easily updating their personal online Migraine Monitor Diary direct from their mobile phone via SMS. This diary then assists them, and their healthcare professional, to identify trigger factors for their attacks and frequency, which helps to improve the management of migraines. Traditional methods of documenting attacks involve patients recording details in a paper diary before visiting their healthcare professional, which led to patients forgetting or misplacing their diaries, as well as issues around legibility and difficulties in analysing manually entered data. 

To use the service, people first log on for free registration with Migrainemonitor.ie and from that point whenever they experience a migraine attack they can directly update their records by texting the word ‘PAIN’ and the level of pain intensity (scale of 1-10) being experienced to the number 57500. A comment can also be added to this text message, such as timing of attack, related trigger etc (e.g. PAIN 5 – felt ill last night). Users can also log on to the website and add further information about that particular attack to assist in identifying any common patterns or causative triggers. The service also allows them to print off their personal record and bring it to their next healthcare professional visit. 

Several hundred people have already registered and regularly use the website, launched in March of this year, with around 5,200 ‘unique visitors’ having logged on, viewing in total over 16,500 pages. In addition to this existing patient service, there are plans to develop the service further to allow healthcare professionals log in and remotely review their patients’ records – representing a real step towards the gold standard of telemedicine. 

According to the MAI, around half a million people in Ireland live with migraine. The condition is estimated to cost Irish businesses €250 million every year as a result of loss in productivity, with the average sufferer being absent from work between 1.5 and 4.5 days annually.  

Find out more about migrane monitor here