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EXPANDING EXPERT WOUND CARE THROUGH TELEMEDICINE
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Email: HOMETELEMEDICINE@HOTMAIL.COM
DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Until recently, home health care agencies
had absorbed an increasing demand for caring for older Americans. While
demographic characteristics remain unchanged for our aging society, since 1997
thousands of home health agencies have closed. With the advent of prospective
payment, thousands more are at risk of closure. Unless alternatives can be
developed or workable solutions can be identified for home care, the health
care of aging Americans may be at risk. Applied Home Telemedicine (AHT) has
spent two years piloting a system that stands to serve as a model for home
care. Using chronic wounds as the first focus, AHT has: (1) assembled
technology that allows remote assessment and guidance, thus potentially
leveraging resources; (2) proven that "expert" clinicians can utilize the
technology to benefit more patients than would otherwise be the case; and (3)
produced remarkably promising clinical and financial results. However, pilot
work has also resulted in the identification of barriers to broad scale access
and utilization, which, if left un-addressed, will threaten commercial
viability and sustainability. This Phase I proposal is directed toward
assembling the components to address each of those barriers and evaluating the
results in terms of increased within-agency utilization and clinical outcomes.
Phase II will assemble these components into a management module to add to
existing clinical and technological modules. To address generalization, the
resulting comprehensive system will be evaluated in a range of agencies and the
content will be expanded to two additional clinical conditions. There is
already considerable interest from potential strategic alliances for Phase II
expansion and commercialization.
PROPOSED COMMERCIAL APPLICATION:
This research will investigate the potential for deeper and broader applications of a
telemedicine-based expert approach to caring for home health patients. If successful,
it has the potential to revolutionize the home health industry by proving the viability of a
new delivery model capable of generating substantially improved patient outcomes
while utilizing resources far more efficiently and effectively.
* Information listed above is at the time of submission. *