Last week, over 12,000 public health professionals flocked to San Diego for the 75-degree weather, ocean views, and the most significant public health conference in the U.S, the American Public Health Association’s Annual Meeting and Expo. Two large buildings downtown were dedicated to housing deep dive conversations about, among other things, tobacco use, obesity, women’s health, racial inequity in health and the most cutting-edge research in the field. In reflection, I had three takeaways from the conference about the role and use of digital health in public health.

#1. Health technology and its benefits are not largely understood in its application to the public health community.

Many times, throughout the conference I found myself reiterating the value of a health platform for clinical, research or evaluation processes. Many people I spoke to had a genuine interest but weren’t sure how technology could optimize their work. In reality, many public health programs and projects are researched and evaluated using patient-reported data. Imagine digitizing that process so patients can participate through an application on their phone; imagine the impact that would have on response rates and loss-to-follow-up. Imagine the benefits of pushing routine surveys to patient’s phone instead of having to call to do scheduled evaluations. Not to mention the equitable distribution of programs and interventions across diverse populations, rural populations and those who have transportation barriers that technology can help address. In public health we operate in a world of outcomes, without being able to show outcomes we don’t see funding renewals, patient participation fades away, and programs fail. Health technology provides a way for researchers and evaluators to track outcomes in real time.

#2. UX/UI can be a major make-or-break when looking at making a tool that applies to diverse or vulnerable populations.

My first event was a meeting in a small room with other health technology professionals discussing the process that they’ve undergone to get health technology recognized as a section at APHA. In this room, we considered the impacts on research, evaluation, follow up, data visualization and overall patient experience. One of the most impactful conversations that I had was with a social worker who embraced technology as a tool for diverse or vulnerable populations. She emphasized how user interface and user experience can shape program success in diverse and vulnerable populations. She encouraged me to reach out to individuals who interact directly with the specific population when designing products to be used in public health settings. Only if the patient or client is engaged with the tool, can we see the successes or obtain accurate information for physicians, for researchers, or health program evaluators. A crucial point when considering Take Away #1, and the importance of highlighting tangible outcomes over time.

#3. There is “data overload” in public health.

This conference had some of the country’s top experts in health, with rows of poster projects, all with their own calculated data sets backing the findings that they were at APHA to present. Some will likely be published while others will remain in the researcher’s computer with little other exposure. I spoke to individuals who were collecting health data, payor data, and policy data, and all were positioning their data sets in different areas independent of each other despite their overwhelming connectivity. With the rate that new studies are conducted, data changes so quickly so even systematic reviews and meta-analyses become outdated far too quickly. There is an opportunity to leverage technology to collect a real-time outcomes database to ensure the hard work that researchers do to make correlations and identify patterns is not lost in the data black hole. Entities such as the CDC, NIH and WHO do an excellent job of collecting and displaying related data sets for public use, however the time that it takes to gather data often puts the data sets months to years behind the times. There is a significant opportunity for technology to lend to this real-time collection process.

Overall, the themes of APHA for me centered around how much opportunity there is to impact the way public health programs are research, delivered and evaluated through the use of digital health. These conversations were inspiring and exciting but also demonstrated how much we still have to do to fully optimize the work that we do in the public health field.

cliexa PTSI Press Release

We are proud to announce that we have officially joined forces with Preventative Technology Solutions, who will now become apart of the cliexa family.

Here is the link to the press release about the acquisition: //www.pr.com/press-release/768313

 

Digital health benefits

2018 has seen a significant boom in the application of technology in digital health innovation, which are poised to disrupt the healthcare industry. Innovations have included advances in mobile health (mHealth), health information technology (IT), as well as wearable and Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices.

cliexa has identified six specific areas of medicine already reaping the benefits of digital health innovation:

1. Rheumatology

Disease Activity Scoring (DAS) metrics remotely collected by cliexa from patients are used by physicians in their offices when assessing the severity of rheumatoid arthritis through a Q & A approach. cliexa empowers patients with the ability to communicate their patient-reported outcomes to their physicians at the touch of a finger, on their own mobile devices, providing physicians with instantly-scored clinically-validated assessments. The application of cliexa innovations in rheumatology drastically increases the efficiency and quality-of-care for both patients and their providers.

Check out the cliexa mobile platform for Rheumatoid Arthritis, cliexa-RA: //www.cliexa.com/cliexamobile/rheumatoid-arthritis/

2. Pain Management, Primary Care, & Integrative Medicine

Chronic pain, affecting over 10% of American adults, is a leading cause of opiate abuse. Managing and overcoming chronic pain is a complex obstacle for many healthcare providers. With the increased shift away from the prescribing of opioids in the treatment of chronic pain, cliexa enables providers to remotely monitors opioid-prescribed patients while empowering them to relay their patient-reported outcomes and track their mental health conditions in association with their chronic pain, while catering specifically towards the individual needs of each patient-provider relationship.

Check out the cliexa mobile platform for Pain Management, cliexa-EASE: //www.cliexa.com/cliexamobile/pain-management/

3. Behavioral Health & Addiction Treatment

Though struggles with addiction are becoming increasingly more prevalent in society, the present methods of addiction treatment are limited. Through innovations in health technologies, patients and providers are shifting towards new ways of treating addiction. The monitoring of patients in real-time is essential for positive treatment outcomes for both patients and their providers. By leveraging patient-reported data, patients adhere to their treatment plans and overcome addiction as a disease, rather than as a fault.

Check out the cliexa mobile platform for Behavioral Health, cliexa-SENSE: //www.cliexa.com/cliexamobile/behavioral-health/

4. Digestive Health

Through cliexa innovations, providers better manage chronic gastrointestinal diseases, such as inflammatory bowel disease or ulcerative colitis, using specifically-designed, highly-structured treatment plans that leverage disease activity scoring models taken from qualitative patient responses to assessments which quantify and track symptoms over long periods of time.

Check out the cliexa mobile platform for Digestive Health, cliexa-IBD: //www.cliexa.com/cliexamobile/inflammatory-bowel-disease/

5. Respiratory Care

cliexa enables providers to qualitatively track chronic diseases of the respiratory system, like chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), through remote patient-reported outcomes. The ability to structure individualized and specialized care leads to improved patient-provider experiences.

Check out the cliexa mobile platform for Respiratory Care, cliexa-COPD: //www.cliexa.com/cliexamobile/chronic-obstructive-pulmonary-disease/

6. Pediatric Care

cliexa health technology drives innovations in mental health resiliency in adolescents, a hot topic in today’s health community. cliexa’s clinically validated medical assessment applications, coupled with its mHealth prevention services, help providers identify and reduce risk behaviors in adolescents and young adults. cliexa’s mobile patient-engagement applications equip providers with the tools adolescents use to overcome anxiety and depression, increasing the overall quality-of-care for both patients and providers.

Check out the cliexa mobile platform for Pediatric Care, cliexa-OPTIONS: //www.cliexa.com/cliexamobile/adolescent-resiliency/

cliexaRA Press Release

cliexa® partners with the Colorado Arthritis Center to identify how screening and monitoring of Rheumatoid Arthritis patients through a customized electronic platform, cliexa-RA, impacts clinical efficiency.

See the full press release from PR.com: https://www.pr.com/press-release/765307

Download the Case Study here: https://www.cliexa.com/cliexa-ra-case-study/

Learn more about cliexa-RA: https://www.cliexa.com/cliexamobile/rheumatoid-arthritis/

Electronic Medical Record (EMR)

At some point in all of our lives, each of us has been a patient. Each of us has faced the benefits, trials, and tribulations of getting care, but very few of us have stood in the shoes of our physician. So, let’s take a look at what it can look like to be a doctor using an EMR system…

First, let’s talk about change. Most of us have undergone frustrating change at work. A change of leadership, new regulations or a new kind of copy paper. But how many of us have undergone a full up-end in our workflow process?

Widespread adoption of the Electronic Medical Record (EMR) system as the new way to organize and store patient data began in 2014 (//bit.ly/2NNghtd), prior to this time processes were largely paper and pen and manually filed.

As of 2015,

This process changed the way medical staff stored and communicated data and while there has been shown to benefit from the shift, the process was long and arduous. Remember that time you had to use Excel for the first time, yeah like that, times 100. Additionally, this change came along with a slew of new regulatory guidelines and reporting rules.

So how has life, post-EMR implementation? One study found that:

  • Physicians spend 49.2% of their time doing paperwork and EHR work
  • Physicians spend 27% of their time with patients.
    • 37.0% of this time with the patient was doing paperwork and EMR work (//bit.ly/2MBRXpG)

With so much time being dedicated to working, physicians are on a tight schedule to maintain their patient load and their desk work.

So how often does this schedule not work out as planned? One study found that:

  • 75% of physicians fall behind in their appointment schedule at least once a week.

Of this 75%:

  • 79% said that the reason for falling behind was that they spent more time than a single visit time allotment with patients.
  • 66% said the reason was that patients were late or didn’t have time to fill out the paperwork.
  • 49% spent time between appointments recording notes.
  • 78% said that appointments are booked too tightly together or were overbooked.

When asked, physicians listed things that they believed would improve their efficiency:

  • 43% said better technology
  • 38% said more non-clinical staff
  • 29% said fewer patients scheduled
  • 19% said more administrative staff (//wb.md/2Ni7joa)

The healthcare system as we know it has numerous opportunities for improvement across the board, but it is important to understand the challenges facing each participant. A collective understanding moves us closer to being able to stand in each others’ shoes and work together to improve the healthcare experience at every level. 

To learn more about how cliexa is solving these problems, download our FREE PDF on Chronic Care Management, and how to streamline clinical workflow.