Almost every company these days heavily relies upon a mobile platform for key business operations or they are in the planning stages to implement one. The health industry is not any different and as hospitals, healthcare providers and insurers are trying to find ways to cut costs, mobile applications and devices are increasingly becoming a reliable source for providing telehealth services. Authentidate Holding Corp. is the latest company to use mobile devices and application to improve certain task, and it has just revealed that it is going to introduce a mobile telehealth tablet and software app to meet the rapidly expanding mobile telehealth market.
The company provides secure Web-based telehealth products and services and according to company officials, this market will grow to almost $7 billion this year. Healthcare providers are being forced to cut costs across the board and mobile telehealth is one of the most effective ways to reduce costs while still providing good healthcare services to patients remotely. The mobile products will be available by February 2013 after the testing and quality assurance procedures are complete.
The mobile platform will provide patients with smaller devices that will give them more mobility, built in Bluetooth connectivity for vital signs, cellular data communication and live audio and video chat capabilities. Having these options available to you anytime there is an emergency is invaluable.
"Our new mobile telehealth tablet and our telehealth App for user-supplied tablets or smart phones are designed to address the needs of mobility in the telehealth marketplace. Mobile patients (patients that are not home-bound) represent a rapidly growing segment of the patient population that can benefit from a remote patient monitoring program. Patients will be able to use the telehealth tablet or install the telehealth App on their own mobile device,” said Gavin Stewart, vice president of Business Development at Authentidate, in a statement.
The ultimate goal of telehealth is to provide cost saving measures by reducing hospital readmissions and emergency visits. The management software application keeps patients with chronic illnesses on the plans they are currently on by assisting healthcare providers in monitoring them. By detecting problems much earlier when they are still manageable saves the patient from enduring extensive procedures and the hospital from spending large amounts of money.
Patients are reviewed by their healthcare provider through a secure Web interface that solution powers. During this connection, the doctor or nurse can go over the individual’s vital signs and talk to the patient to determine if everything is going well. This two way communication gives the doctor a chance to assess the overall health of the patient. Another added benefit of this interaction is it personalizes the doctor/patient relationship because it is in an informal setting and the patient is more relaxed. This will help the doctor encourage vital suggestions and push the patient to do better by living a healthier lifestyle.
Edited by
Jamie Epstein
