change:healthcare, a healthcare cost transparency company, and
MediKeeper a health information technology (HIT) enterprise, have announced a strategic partnership to create a personalized HIT application with built-in cost savings to assist employees, employers and the general public to save money on their personal health spending.
"As people focus greater attention these days on their healthcare through health and wellness programs offered by employers and health plans, the concern continually moves to what can be done to stem the ever-escalating costs of healthcare in America," said Jason Peoples, vice president of sales for MediKeeper, in a release. “More and more of the cost is coming directly out of consumers' wallets and we are now able to lessen that. By partnering with change:healthcare, we're offering all types of consumers an enhancement to our web-based personal health application that will help users see how easy it is to reduce their healthcare costs by up to 30 percent."
Officials claim the companies are so confident the new application will save cash that they have even guaranteed it will eventually end up paying for itself. They said the new collaborated HIT app – unofficially called MediKeeper version x – will be provided to large employer groups and health plans over the next few weeks, and an upgraded ‘direct to consumer’ version will be launched later in the fourth quarter of this year.
"We're pleased that MediKeeper has recognized the change:healthcare platform as a critical tool that can help consumers better see where they can make changes in their purchase habits and increase the value of wellness programs," said Christopher Parks, co-founder and chief executive officer of change:healthcare. "With MediKeeper's leadership in the personal health application space, we hope to continue helping consumers navigate the American healthcare system."
Collaborative efforts, such as this one between change:healthcare and MediKeeper, are in keeping with one of the seven mantras of the time, which dictates that organizations must make serious efforts to reach out and work with each other. The seven guidelines for succeeding in current economic environment are collectively called the CES 7 and were pronounced and initiated at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2009.
MediKeeper claims it builds and delivers customized HIT solutions including EHR (Electronic Health records), health risk assessment, and a consumer health information portal, and change:healthcare claims it helps people save money and make more informed healthcare consumer decisions and provides a 24x7 Web-based platform for users to more easily share healthcare experiences about medical provider quality, cost, access and performance to help them make the best healthcare decisions.
In build up to
improving America’s healthcare system, Barack Obama, on January 8, 2009 - then, the President Elect, currently the President of the United States of America – made this impacting statement, "To improve the quality of our health care while lowering its cost, we will make the immediate investments necessary to ensure that, within five years, all of America's medical records are computerized. This will cut waste, eliminate red tape and reduce the need to repeat expensive medical tests. But it just won't save billions of dollars and thousands of jobs; it will save lives by reducing the deadly but preventable medical errors that pervade our health care system."
This allocation comes close on the heels of
funds allocated for healthcare when the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009 was signed into law by Obama on Feb. 17. Approximately $20 billion from within $147.7 billion for all health care was set aside for HIT. $17.2 billion was reserved for incentives to agencies that promote Electronic Health Records (EHR) effectively, $2 billion for affiliated grants, a part of $1.5 billion was set aside for information technology equipment at community health centers, and $200 million for HIT training.
A positive offshoot is that HIT will allegedly generate at least
200,000 new jobs in USA. HIT also targets early detection of epidemics, chronic disease tracking and creating cloud resident personal health records for individuals to instantly view and share with doctors anywhere on the globe to enable them to avail timely and safe medical intervention.
Edited by
Patrick Barnard
