Category Archives: Health care provider

How a Personal Cloud Might Streamline Our Personal Business

Jon Udell in a post today in Wired Cloudline uses a story of his son’s car accident and hospitalization, and the related auto and health insurance issues, to paint a hopeful picture of how a “Personal Cloud” might, sometime in the future, simplify and streamline the flow of documents and bills.

What’s interesting is that instead of the usual ranting about the inefficiencies of various health care providers (doctors, hospitals, rehab clinics) and insurance payers (auto and health, he acknowledges that only he can be the “router” of documents for this single event.

His business relationship with particular providers and payers, combined with the event (an accident and subsequent treatment) makes him the only party uniquely able to be the traffic cop for data flow.

One View of the customer is a laudable business mantra. But a customer often engages with many businesses in the context of what is, from the customer’s point of view, one business process. It’s a decentralized game with many players, and the only referee is the customer. Only we can create the One View that we need. Today we do it the hard way, using phone calls and faxes and piles of papers on our desks, and we do it poorly. I’m hoping our personal clouds will enable us to do it easily and well.

He’s right. There’s no magic way to take these burdens off our shoulders. But the right technology could make it lighter and more efficient.

Read his post.


Zyantus OS Records System Helps Meet Federal Requirements

Zyantus has  launched Zyantus OS Records system, a cloud-based electronic health records (EHR) system. Zyantus OS Records provides electronic storage of patient records and their secure transmission among health care facilities, health information organizations and government agencies according to national standards.

Zyantus OS Records system has earned the federal government’s Complete EHR Certification, which officially deems the EHR software capable of enabling providers to qualify for funding under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). The certification, provided by the Drummond Group ONC-ATCB program, ensures EHRs meet the meaningful use criteria for eligible provider technology.

When fully implemented, EHR’s, such as Zyantus OS Records, should result in lower record keeping costs and improved care by facilitating shared access to consistent patient records among health care providers and facilities across the nation.

“We have been in this industry for twelve years and understand the importance of EHR in maximizing the efficiencies of a medical practice,” said Zyantus President Adam Schwindt. “We take pride in always being a step ahead and evolving our services in this ever-changing industry. Health care providers can now leverage Zyantus OS Records to not only make significant care improvements but also achieve meaningful use and qualify for incentive funds under ARRA.”

Since 2000, Zyantus has served the health care industry by specializing in management solutions for medical offices of all kinds. In that time, the company has built a reputation for easy-to-use programs, comprehensive services and rapid response to customer needs.

The Zyantus OS Records system was developed from the ground up by medical personnel who understand office management and the importance of maintaining office productivity while transitioning to new management systems. Zyantus OS Records was designed with Health Information Exchange (HIE) parameters in mind from the beginning, and will securely store and readily share health care information with new HIE systems as they are built.

Health care providers must prove their medical records systems achieve meaningful use in order to qualify for government reimbursement for their investment. The software features a simplified meaningful use section to aid medical offices seeking attestation in order to qualify for incentive payments. In addition, Zyantus OS Records already meets a number of proposed stage 2 meaningful use requirements.

As a cloud-based system, Zyantus OS Records provides a high level of security and is easily implemented across multiple sites, including Mac and PC platforms, smart phones and tablets. No additional hardware is needed to implement the system as it is hosted by the Amazon EC2 HIPAA-compliant cloud with unlimited storage capacity. There are no hidden or additional fees for support. Zyantus OS Records also features friendly, customer-service oriented personnel training and implementation and free e-Prescribe for patient medications.


LifeWatch V: Smartphone with Healthcare Sensors Built In

LifeWatch AG, a wireless cardiac monitoring service and home sleep test provider in the U.S.,  today released LifeWatch V, a healthcare smartphone. The smartphone allows patients as well as health- and wellbeing-conscious consumers to self-operate a wide range of embedded medical sensors, wellness-related applications, cloud-based services and 24/7 call center support.

By using the barely visible sensors on the phone’s frame, patients as well as health- and wellbeing conscious consumers can track, capture, collect and analyze their health and medical measurements anywhere anytime. The features include ECG, body temperature, blood glucose, heart rate, blood oxygen saturation, body fat percentage and stress levels (heart rate variability). All collected data can be retrieved from the cloud for a follow-up anytime anywhere. Users can thus take corrective action, plan their diets and activities, securely share the information with a health provider or family member, trend and analyze the data and more. Patients are also able to program the unit to remind them of their drug type, dose and intake time.

LifeWatch V was designed with a flexible service-product ecosystem in mind, allowing easy integration of services. The LifeWatch V handset unit includes a service enablement platform to support the transmission of medical data to be analyzed, evaluated and communicated to health professionals and call center personnel around the clock. The device wirelessly interacts with a cloud-based environment allowing users direct access to a wide range of valuable complementary medical and wellness related services.

LifeWatch intends to launch the healthcare solution smartphone world-wide. In the initial markets LifeWatch has identified several local partners to enter into strategic partnerships.