Hacking Health Design Challenge puts technology in the service of patients & doctors

By: Gadjo Sevilla

April 15, 2015

 

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By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

The Ontario Telemedicine Network (OTN) hosted an eight week Hacking Health Design Challenge where over 80 developers worked to create innovations to transform healthcare in Ontario. 

The event was kicked off a few weeks ago at the MaRS Discovery District in downtown Toronto where Dr. Ed Brown, founder and CEO of OTN gave a keynote discussing the various innovations in telehealth and healthcare technology that could really improve the lives of Canadians.

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Dr. Ed Brown of OTN -“I call the telehomecare program the eliminating fear program. In the past, people would panic, pick up the phone and dial 911. Now they know what to do.”

Dr. Brown discussed the latest trends in health technology, including apps like Apple’ HealthKit and ResearchKit, which have the potential of helping patients and their health providers monitor and anticipate health problems as well as quickly help diagnose and propose treatment.

“Imagine that you’re at home and have a pretty significant illness.  You may know who to call about it or not know who to call. Patients like these are living with a lot of fear. Engaged patients, who are aware and who understand what is happening can have a new level of confidence,” Dr. Brown explained.

“I call the telehomecare program the ‘eliminating fear program’. In the past, people would panic, pick uop the phone and dial 911. Now they know what to do,” he added.

Informed and connected patients are engaged patients and Dr. Brown believes that this can have a positive impact on treatment, most specially for ageing patients who may be increasingly disconnected and isolated and likely to fall into depression because of this disconnection.

Technology also makes it possible for the specialists and physicians of a particular patient to communicate freely and instantaneously.

Speeding up access to medical records, being able to quickly consult on the best course of treatment and having open lines of communication  between doctors can only help serve patients faster.

Dr. Brown pulled out his iPhone during his talk and said, “this is the telemedicine device of the future. We’ve been plugging away at telemedicine for many years, we’ve been reducing the problems of space and time to give patients better access to care. But now we have a revolution with mobile devices that allow us to do so many things we could never do.”

Dr. Brown explained that patients with chronic disease can send their data in to get coaching from a live person or team of persons. “We’re not quite there yet, but we’re seeing the emergence of applications that could do that.”

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Coverage of Ontario’s Telestroke program that provides access to a standard of care for hyper acute stroke patient assessment and management for residents of the province who currently don’t have access to it.

 

The problem right now is that while many health trackers and smartphone apps do work well, in that they can accurately track and note down health information but the issue is getting them to doctors and specialists.

A lot of this health information, from the activity rate, to the heart rate, remains on people’s phones or their smartwatches. Getting the information to a health provider in a timely fashion, is the biggest challenge so far and one that the Hacking Health Design Challenge hopes to help conquer.

Dr. Brown’s telehome care program has used technology like video conferencing and online collaboration to help cut down expenses in rural areas. “Last year we avoided over 200 million kilometres in travel. That’s a lot of travel.” That added up to $60 million in saved travel expenses which could be used in other areas of health care.

“That doesn’t even include the out of pocket expenses for patients, missed time from work and other incidental expenses,” Dr. Brown added.

The Hacking Health Design Challenge aims to create solutions that will similarly save money while engaging patients and enabling improved tracking and communications between patients and their care providers.


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