Concern areas for any mHealth application developer

A number of technology entrepreneurs want to make use of the population of smart phones through working the ways to healthcare and placing a claim into the mHealth industry. There are some difficulties these innovators should deal with to develop a broadly used and sustainable mHealth application. In the mobile app market, success would mean that a mobile app could provide business worth to their users. This could can be found in the type of new income, with cutting expenses or enhancing operational performance. Once checking out the healthcare space, understanding success is much more complicated than that. To ensure that an mHealth app to be noticed as worthwhile, it should reach at least one of the below stated works: develop patient outcomes, minimize healthcare costs, engage patients or enhance care ability. Primary elements that needs to be existing in order to actually evaluate the success with an mHealth application.

In this era of smartphone virtual assistants and effective computer systems that may offer analysis recommendations according to lab outcomes and |health charts, mHealth needs to be capable of incorporate with techniques that may offer real-time evidence-based reactions to patients’ inquires. It starts the possibility for an smart and interactive application which helps patients and providers. An application such as this can make guide to anyone with low blood sugar or cause an alert looking at a patient’s unstable important signs to a nearby primary care doctor or medical center. Regarding mHealth, there are lots of different kinds of applications available. There are products which target fitness monitoring and others for diabetes as well as dialysis care. If a company concentrates on specific area of expertise, they can provide the proper solution to the difficulties experienced by patients with specified circumstances. This narrow focus could be of support by updating patients aided by the latest scientific findings associated on their state.

Making a mobile application which is simple to use for any age and grades of technological capability is among the secrets to an effective mHealth move. Mobile applications will probably need patients to often modify all of them with health facts and communicate with them while in necessity of care input. To make certain broad adoption, it is important that patients get the application easy to use. One patient, one chart is a very common saying for medical centers marketing their unified EHR program which provides their patients one health report in their system of services. Actually, an mHealth application cannot need to connect with just one medical center program. It would possibly remain vendor-neutral and provide integration abilities which EHR vendors could leverage in order to use the application. This can be achieved through following the latest health data exchange criteria found in the healthcare field. Best claim that any mHealth application could have is that it offers stats measuring development within patient results. When placing the patients’ wellness first, an application would assure patients that its focus is with the right area. It also should show that it could give financial benefit to payers, medical centers or patients.

Lot of mHealth applications could study and process sensor readings through the patient. Which data can be subject to switch amongst medical centers and different care facilities. Any upcoming mHealth step will most likely need to deal with interoperability issues by making sure patient information could be shared through the app. There are also examples of mHealth success from all over the world. It has moved lots of healthcare professionals to constantly evaluate their mHealth way to make sure they provide the advantages of particular applications to the patients. That is why, medical centers, patients and wellness plan providers are checking the market industry, looking for the application stores and speaking with vendors to recognize which mHealth applications can help develop care and outcomes.

You can get in touch with a mobile health app development company who can help you develop healthcare apps that are stable, scalable and secure.

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One Significant Change in NIST Smart Grid Latest Release 3.0

National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has done development to global standards, ever Since the version 2.0 was released. The interoperability panel signed letters of intent on work together along with smart grid organizations in Japan, Ecuador and Colombia. It continues to be a public-private partnership at the moment. A letter on intent was signed with their Brazilian counterpart last year 2013. According to Paul Boynton, from NIST, the panel met with Korean and working closely with European Union companies for further coordinate standards. International standards ensure that smart grid providers located in the United States could spread their products and services, at the same time reduce prices for the consumers when manufacturers could get benefits when lacking to change their products to adjust with various standards in several countries.

National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), stated in a draft version 2.0 Smart Grid implementation needs a typical semantical knowledge of data factors of their framework and guideline for the Smart Grid interoperability standards. It suggests a conceptual design regarding the Smart Grid as described by electrical moves and protected communications operating around seven primary domain names: bulk generation, distribution, transmission, operations, markets, service providers and customers. The draft also says, the networked Smart Grid must provide the ability of an application in a single domain in order to communicate using an application in every other one, enabling appropriate role restriction along with other security settings. Among every domain system, there most likely to arise several sub-networks including various transport ways and scope.

A report from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) on a final version 2.0 for the smart grid interoperability released Feb. 28 varies just a little from a previous draft the agency released last autumn. The report analyzes the smart grid and lists standards developed through the voluntary procedure, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in July 2011 has rejected to begin a rulemaking procedure upon adoption of interoperability standards in support of voluntary standards recognition. George Arnold, the national coordinator for smart grid interoperability at NIST said in an interview, there isn’t really a sign of rulemaking procedure is required at the moment, however in the long run things might change. Further he said, there is rather more focus for the final version’s smart grid conceptual guide diagram at distributed energy resources compared to there was in draft. Distributed energy resources come from numerous small sources situated on the grid, including small wind turbines, solar energy or even stored energy. The smart grid must allow their easier integration on the energy grid, Arnold added.

NIST released version 3.0 on April 15, 2014, is basically similar to the earlier version, that NIST published in February 2012. One significant change ever since then was the transition of the Smart Grid Interoperability Panel from the government-funded public-private relationship for an industry-led non-profit. From 2010 to 2012, as a government-funded entity, the Panel founded a list of interoperability standards, authorizing 58 of those. At the start of 2013, the panel moved on to becoming an industry-led non-profit, increasing a great deal of their capital with membership dues, while NIST still offers a few financial assist and technical assistance. Since September, there have been 82 other interoperability standards under review that might end up in the catalog. If you would like to develop Electronic Medical Records, you can liaison with a healthcare development company who can help you develop healthcare apps that are stable, scalable and secure.

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High time to raise mHealth applications

A study, appointed by professional mobile services firm Mobiquity, discovers that around 70% of consumers use mobile applications consistently to track physical activity and calorie consumption, yet just 40 percent impart that data with their doctors. Providers are still heedful over the mhealth development. What’s more this alert could very well be keeping them from huge care development chances. Privacy concerns and the need for a doctor’s suggestion are the two elements obstructing the utilization of mobile and fitness applications for mhealth reasons, authorities said to the Boston-based Mobiquity, which produced Get Mobile, Get Healthy – The Appification for Health and Fitness. The authorities said, health community need to take a more effective steps in pushing these sorts of applications and uses.

The study shows there’s a big opportunity for medical experts, health organizations and pharmaceutical companies to use mobile to bring behavior change and much better results for patients, said Scott Snyder, the president and CSO at Mobiquity,in a press release. The gap will be covered by the individuals who plan mobile health solutions that are essential and laser-focused on users’ objectives, and that precisely adjust data collection with client control and security. The study, conducted on 1,000 consumers who use or plan to use health and fitness applications. As per the study, 34% users say that they may use their applications more often as possible if their doctor recommend it. 61% say security concerns are obstructing them to adopt such applications, 24% users are concerned about the time spent, 9% are still finding it to be complicated, 6% smartphone users are having no desire to think about health concers and 73% said that they are more healthy of the fact that they use a smartphone and applications to track health and fitness. 53% discovered that they are consuming more calories and then they realized. 63% are willing to continue with mobile health tracking or increase the same in the next five years. 55% are plan to try with wearable devices for example pedometers, wristbands or smartwatches. 69% believe that using a smartphone to track health and fitness is more crucial than using the same for social networking, 68% gives priority for shopping, 60% believes that its good for listening to music and 30% say that the phone is for making calls ore receiving calls.

The officials from Mobiquity stated in the survey, that they believe mobile health will rise from early adopters to mainstream in 2014. As per the early rumors, Apple might launch the much-anticipated iWatch in the next version of Apple’s iPhone OS. To own the emerging wearable market, Google, Samsung and Pebble are in the race. It is useful to understand the experiences and perceptions from the users about smartphones to track their health and fitness. Brands, promoters and healthcare communities must give attention to types of applications to make everyone involved and exactly what lessons may be discovered and used about utilizing mobile phone to push healthier activity and attitude change. It is worthwhile to judge the space between consumers’ desire for the quantified-self compared to that of the healthcare profession.

The study specifies suggestions for mHealth application developers aiming to create an impact in the market. Need to surprise people with new knowledge regarding their health and fitness is useful. However they might not understand what to do then with that information, according to the report – you should simply guide them and show exactly how such information translate into practical ways to use a mobile application or device to experience positive behavior change. Many people say they’re using applications to track goals, become more familiar with health conditions and remain inspired, however they also express that they usually forget to utilize them, the report suggests – when the user experience isn’t meant to mesh and adjust to consumers way of living with their health journeys, these solutions swiftly become unimportant. This can be a big opportunity for the new generation of applications and wearable devices. Big achievers in mobile health and fitness area are going to be those people who encourage widespread adoption by assisting people reduce or even get rid of the time it requires to gather and monitor any data, but still allow them to manage what health data to share and with whom to share it, as per the report – it’s an excellent stability of getting a mobile health-tracking solution that actually works automatically in the background. You can get in touch with a mobile healthcare application development who can help you develop healthcare apps that are stable, scalable and secure.

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Measures to reduce healthcare costs

Expenditure rose rapidly in Health Care during 10 years in the last quarter, an improvement that may possibly envisioned increased expenses for consumers this year. Costs for health care increased with a 5.6% yearly rates during the forth quarter, the Bureau of Economics Analysis stated a week ago. The leap resulted an acute increased modification with the government’s estimation over consumer expenditure in general and included for almost 25% of the economy’s 2.6% annual development within the last 3 months in 2013. This drives the increase of $8 billion rise in hospital revenue, significantly more as compared to earlier 4 quarters put together, as reported by the Census Bureau and Royal Bank of Scotland. RBS economic expert Omair Sharif states the rise in hospitals’ earnings were puzzling due to the amount of inpatient days dropped 1% throughout the 4th quarter. The rise is really a reasonable differ from slow-growing rates in health care costs and also investing during the past few years. Lot of unemployed people in America moved with no medical insurance or perhaps restricted any investing while in the recession as well as during the slow improvement, states Dan Mendelson, CEO of consulting company Avelere Health.

Furthermore, the 2010 Affordable Care Act offered incentives to medical centers in order to become much more efficient as well as restrict patient admitting again. Insurance firms progressively have moved expenses on patients with high-deductible methods along with the various other steps, motivating Americans in order to restrict visits to physicians and medical centers, he states. However, such developments may perhaps are grading down, and also extended ascending challenges upon medical care expenses, for instance the development of pricey advanced treatments, tend to emerging again, as stated by Mendelson. Ever since late 2011, companies have actually added 2.6 million employments, as well as the jobless rates has dropped down from 8.5% to 6.7%. “The enhanced economic climate could cause people getting the means to invest in medical care services,” American Hospital Association spokeswoman Jennifer Schleman stated for the 4th quarter leap in hospital income.

The cost-effective Care Act’s authorized for American people to enjoy coverage of health the current year or else give a penalty might fuel additional expenditure increases this year, states George Miller, a member in the Altarum Institute’s Center for Sustainable Health Spending. The centers for the Medicare and State Health Program Services is expecting health expenses to go up by 6.1% this year, which would be an increase of 4% in 2013, as a result 11 million people in America could be benefited from Health Insurance. The consumers spend on health care may also become expensive. Yearly health rising prices has actually been reduced ever since the recession and also ended up being the 50-year reduced to 0.9% in the month of January, as stated by Capital Economics. However the falling was basically to a certain extent because of the expiration of a huge number of drug patents in the year 2011 and 2012, resulting costly top quality medicines to get replaced with lower priced generics. Among less patents expiring in the couple of years, “the majority will end up in drug rising prices to be reversed,” as stated by Paul Dales associated with Capital Economics. Dales considers one among the list of factors which should move yearly healthcare rising prices to 2.5% over the next couple of years as well as push whole rising prices, except food and energy costs, over the Federal Reserves 2% goal as soon as the following year. Which may encourage the Fed to increase rate of interest much before expected in 2015, he states.

EHRs – Electroni Health Records and HIEs – Health Information Exchange with e-Prescribing plays a vital role in health care in reducing costs. It includes an added level of patient safety monitoring as well as enhancing the standers of patient care in general. EHRs are complete health records which includes information on medical procedures, diagnoses, lab results and vaccinations while giving an overall electronic review of a patient’s medical life. Whereas HIEs is designed for allowing the exchange of EHRs around all the healthcare stakeholders that provides records which can be used during the treatment or care. The EHRs and HIEs not simply gain access to data and minimize medical errors; better quality patient-centered attention but they also facilitate lower cost. The cost of care can also be reduced by implementing an integrated total population care management. Which not only improves quality of care but it significantly enables much better health results. Population care management solutions can enhance healthcare delivery along with high quality, while encouraging healthcare recommendations as well as cutting down the costs. You can build healthcare softwares within allocated budgets and time schedules through healthcare software development companies.

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Future of Accountable Care Organizations

The challenging and changing nature of healthcare industry is leading to the emergence of Accountable Care Organizations or ACOs. An ACO is actually a group comprising of primary care specialists, doctors, hospitals along with associated healthcare providers who work together and have a common aim to deliver coordinated high quality care to the patients. The ACO was created by ACA or Affordable Care Act, based on the vision of creating a health care system, which is more effective as well as connected. In ACOs, accountability for clinical processes as well as patient care coordination are shared by multiple providers. The main aim is to help in the reduction of health care expenses and also for quality improvement of national healthcare.

One of the must-have competencies that is required for the proper formation as well as functioning of ACO is interprofessional team care along with aid management. In the unforeseeable future, it may be assumed that there will be a shortage in the supply of skilled healthcare professionals. With a constrained supply, more effective models of leverage will be required, which will lead to interprofessional team care applications. In fact, it is best to come out with a design of physician compensation, since the financial scenario is such that having plans of salary-based compensations might be a good idea. It is also a good idea to manage the system properly by regularly updating the performance metrics as well as benchmarks along with regular evaluation. Recording the performance in balance sheets is another addition on the to-do list.

From both clinical and operational perspective, ACOs actually make sense. The healthcare organizations these days are often filled with faulty communication habits as well as inefficient workflows, which affects both outcomes as well as quality in a negative way. The issues can be countered by the recognized ACOs, only if they meet some indicators along with derived data of some key areas, like experience of care providers along with patients, care coordination, safety of patients through analysis, reporting along with error prevention and the ‘at-risk population’ which includes health of elderly as well as physically sick people.

The complex nature of healthcare makes it necessary to approach issues in cohesive groups that work together, so that objectives like expertise sharing, creativity, development of new skills, influencing decisions as well as increase of personal autonomy are achieved. The formation of such teams may be possible only by elimination of barriers that may be encountered in regular communications. For unlocking the quality outcomes as well as team performance, communication excellence is needed. In healthcare, communication must be simple through simple conversation with each other. Any gap in communication may result in limited quality service. If issues are not addressed, it may result in ineffective, inefficient as well as potentially unsafe performance, which might lead to unintended outcomes.

Since healthcare system products are services, to make ACOs really effective as well as the potential future of healthcare, evaluation should be done in respect of parameters like reliability, tangibles, empathy, assurance, communication, accessibility along with clinical measures. When these measures are achieved, then high performance teams can be developed and bonus benefits will be experienced along with job satisfaction.

The diverse nature of ACO is complimentary to the diverse natures of the patients that they serve. Almost half of them are organizations led by physicians, with 20% including critical access hospitals, rural health centers as well as community health centers, which serve rural along with low income communities. Their good work helps ensure that high quality medical services are accessed by normally under-served populations. It is possible by putting extra attention on the patients. Currently, the demand as well as popularity of ACOs are growing steadily. With more than 3 million medicare beneficiaries being served by ACOs, the program may seem to be the future of the healthcare industry. There are plans of launching some additional ACOs in 2014 which will be continued annually. You can build healthcare apps within allocated budgets and time schedules through companies having clinical software development expertise.

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Engaging patients using technology

Every patient draws satisfaction and comfort on being extended good personalized care. With technology permeating the healthcare space, there is a strong feeling amongst many people that the degree of personalized care is only going to improve in the future. Infact, technological innovations are also expected to find progressive solutions to the hurdles currently faced in managing and curing fatal diseases. This is the consequence of the paradigm shift in the manner in which people have started viewing the impact of technology on healthcare. There is a high degree of willingness from their end to become part of the solution to the world’s healthcare problems with the aid of all sorts of technologies – to the extent that they are now open to virtual doctor visits and to the extensive use of remote medical devices and health sensors. Basically, there seems to be no hesitation whatsoever in embracing a form of healthcare which makes it possible for them to access care outside the hospital premises, share their information anonymously for better outcomes, receive care which is highly personalized i.e. even take into account the patient’s genetic details.

Given the expectations which patients have, it has become imperative on the part of providers and physicians to acknowledge them and subsequently device ways to address them. Though the inhibitions on the part of patients towards using personal health records and mobile apps for managing their care is on the wane, physicians in turn can be reluctant to accept electronic data from patients due to liability concerns. A research was done in order understand the reasons for the apprehension on the part of the physicians and the subsequent steps taken to address them. The major concerns included timeliness of data availability, adequacy of response, volume of data, accuracy and decision on who should respond. Based on the findings, some steps have been suggested to make it possible for physicians to better engage with patients using technology.

They include the following:

• Achieve an understanding of the nature of information patients would be expected to share , how they would do it and who would be the person responsible from the clinical team to review the information and at what frequency

• Identify and train a member of the clinical care team to monitor incoming data and decide urgency

• Have a protocol in place to handle medical emergency

• Use the correct judgment to arrive at a decision on whether or not a patient-generated electronic health information needs to be included in a physician’s medical record

The above points can act as valuable guidelines for providers as well in their endeavor to engage patients using technology. Besides, they will also enable them to offer highly effective, efficient and most importantly patient-centered care. With better data and technology at their disposal, it will be possible to see what is happening to patients more easily and, if need be, make the required adjustments in real time. In the new emerging payment models like Accountable Care Organizations, technology can actually play a very crucial role in engaging patients – by prompting more preventive behavior and spurring patient-physician discussions. The new models aim to negate fee-for-service by offering incentives and savings to patients for doing things the right way. This is where they expect technology to play a major role. Mobile health app development teams can help you build clinical and EHR/EMR software projects within allocated budgets and time schedules.

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What are the major issues in using Medical Devices

Medical devices do not work standalone any more. They are at one level part of the networks of providers who use them and at another that of all other networks of all other providers they get connected with; courtesy the phenomena of interoperability and Health Information Exchanges. Under such fast changing circumstances, the impact of incidents of hacking, malware and other cybercrimes related to the devices have the potential of taking gigantic proportions. Is there any one stakeholder who is to be blamed for the majority of the accidents that result out of medical devices? A thorough analysis done reveals that the outcome, which in some cases could be really serious, can have a genesis involving any of the concerned ones. For e.g. the manufacturers could be at fault for not issuing regular updates which they are expected to. Because each patch would require a review by the regulators, they might give it a skip altogether in order to evade the process of going through the grill every now and then. The hospitals might not also report all problems as and when they arise. A classic case in point could be devices running on old versions of operating systems which might get affected by malware but would not get updated with the latest version of an antivirus as it would require a review by the regulator. All such activities are not necessarily in the best interests of the patients at large.

A security breach, when it happens in a medical device is not just an instance of patient information getting jeopardized. Technically, from the perspective of a provider, it becomes a HIPPA liability. From getting the device to malfunction it can clearly put at risk the lives of patients. It is not uncommon to hear of incidents of hacking, malware and cybercrimes leading to disastrous outcomes. What is a matter of real concern is that as HITECH pushes forward with its EHR adoption drive, it will eventually lead to medical devices getting tightly connected to EHRs. It will thus increase the possibility of problems arising out of faulty medical devices taking gigantic proportions. Once the Stage 2 of Meaningful Use goes into effect, the widespread presence of interoperability and health information exchanges can result in one infected medical device corrupting distinct EHRs it eventually gets linked with.

For Healthcare facilities, it is highly important to ensure the following

• ensure that there is no unauthorized access made to medical devices or networks
• track and monitor medical devise and network activity continually for early detection of any infection.
• have in place antivirus and firewall which get updated regularly
• stay in touch with manufacturers to stay updated on any particular risk they are aware of
• have provision to isolate devices in the event of their getting infected
• ensure continuation of activities during adverse events also

Most of the medial devices are built in such a manner that anyone who manages to have access to the password can get into the firmware of the devices and potentially change it. Since cyber and intentional attacks are a reality, a loophole like this can easily be exploited; especially if it has something to do with implantable electronic medical devices such as heart defibrillators and insulin pumps. FDA, on realizing this, has made it mandatory starting next year to have in place an agreement which would mean that only the device makers have the required access to alter the programming logic.

Broad guidelines issued to manufacturers require them

• to limit device access

• ensure that individual components have a high degree of protection

• build provision for quick recovery and retention in the event of breakdowns

• be quick to build security for devices keeping in mind the environment they operate in

Many start-up ventures are quite bullish on the potential medical devices have. This has led to a good amount of innovation in this field. Wearable technology is one area which is seeing a lot of traction with projections of the market reaching approximately $6 billion by the year 2016. However, since getting the regulatory sanctions is a critical element in the equation, and the process is expected to be a tough one, venture funds have not flown in at a desired pace yet. Healthcare software development teams can help you customize medical devices as well as build interactive dashboards for you to analyze the data.

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Major factors affecting healthcare as it evolves

The true importance of Health IT will be understood only when people start looking upon it as something beyond just electronic health records. Only then, will Practices understand the relevance and the need to invest and build up the required infrastructure to support its implementation. At the same time, a lot is left desired in terms of the pace and manner in which its adoption is being rolled out. Standards seem to be in a constant state of flux followed by emphasis on technologies whose benefits in a true sense have not been realized universally. This has compelled comments from eminent groups expressing concern over unintended consequences and additional costs for physicians. Infact, surveys done have clearly started indicating that it takes time to bring about changes in the infrastructure of a health system to support the Health IT efforts and to deploy the tools – that to expect results to start showing immediately is a tall order.

Healthcare has an industry has been experiencing significant changes across all the major dimensions, namely; regulatory, technological, medical and market. This has compelled the leaders of the industries to come together and collaborate so as to define the best ways of adapting to the changes. Of all the important ones some which stand out for the impact that they make have been shared below:

• More engagement and control for Patients: They are going to be more informed about the what’s and how’s of any treatment process that they undergo. On the insurance front, the availability of exchanges will allow then to make better buying decisions based on their need. Use of mHealth will help them to administer self-monitoring technologies. With general awareness of better living habits going up, they will be more involved in managing their health.

• Overhaul of Care-Settings: There will be a major shift of care delivery to homes and communities. Technological advancements will make it possible for patients to stay connected with their providers remotely and avoid unnecessary visits. In addition to that, informed and engaged patients will be better equipped to self-manage a lot of things, courtesy availability of data through electronic health records, smartphones etc.

• Move towards to Pay-for-Performance Billing: Every dollar spent will have to be justified in terms of the treatment offered. Quality, Outcome and finally Satisfaction will slowly become the mandatory deliverable for all providers. New methods of payments are expected to evolve to bring about more risk-sharing and accountability. The models are likely to become more team-based with Non-physicians providers expected to play an important role.

• Consolidation of stakeholders: Independent hospitals and stand-alone practitioners are going to find it tough to sustain the operations. With the focus shifting towards better efficiency, lowering costs and improving quality, all concerned stakeholders i.e. payers, hospitals, pharmaceutical suppliers etc. will see consolidation as means of sustenance.

This will result in a better integrated approach to delivery of care for physicians the most important shift would be that in the payment model. From affecting the financial status of the present breed of physicians in the short term, it would have a defining long-term effect on the career decisions of many interested to join the profession.

Many physicians today receive payments on a fee-for-service basis which provides no incentive for delivering high quality of expertise and which ironically would result in reducing the number of visits and thus the services they offer the patients. However, the changes taking place currently have altered the dynamics altogether. With an emphasis on lowering cost and improving quality, physicians are going to be put on a budget and expected to offer the best of outcome and care within it .Be it capitation and shared savings, withholds and rick pools, pay for performance or bundled payments the emphasis of payment models will be entirely towards risk sharing. All this just adds to the headache for the fraternity already bogged down by the burden of having to adapt to the technical interventions. The last thing that they want now is their profession not rewarding them financially enough.

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Not an ideal beginning for Health Insurance Exchanges

The response provided to the much awaited health insurance exchanges seems to have been overwhelming with a large number of consumers showing interest in registering themselves and searching for best available plans. The unfortunate part has been that the info systems expected to handle the transactions have failed to deliver. The opening day of health insurance marketplace was marked with delays and server crashes. Technical issues have resulted in preventing consumers from signing up online and looking up for plan information. One obvious cause has been the inability of these sites to handle such large number of parallel transactions. In most cases the platforms are not robustly built to handle online traffic as huge as is coming their way. Consumers, in the meantime, have been urged to follow the old fashioned way of buying plans either over telephone or in person. Only the waiting time is expected to go up till the online registration part is not handled.

The insurers on their part have been caught in a web of uncertainty. They do not have much information about how many enrollments will they have to deal with eventually. Insurers are used to handling batches of electronic data sent across to them. But it becomes difficult to handle them when they are corrupt or incomplete. This is precisely what is happening right now. Technical issues having been dogging the federal run health exchanges. This has resulted in faulty or incomplete data being shared from their end with insurers. In some cases, the files shared do not open or are in a state where they cannot be used further. As a quick fix, they have resorted to manually correcting the errors and processing them. But such a thing will not be possible as one approaches the enrollment deadline – which was earlier scheduled on 15^th of Dec 2013. With millions of people expected to sign up for the program, handling all the incorrect files will be next to impossible. The problem is not only with the federal run exchanges but with the state run ones too.

All this has resulted in the exchanges unable to share exact enrollment statistics as of date. Inspite of all the chaos which exists, the insurers do not want miss out on the opportunity and have taken it upon themselves to market their offerings to the people. They clearly see a lot of scope for generating business from the population which would be taking up insurance coverage for the first time. Thus they are not waiting for the states to educate people and are launching their own marketing campaigns. Since it has started to sink in that that the systems will take a bit to time to start running optimally, they are actively pursuing channels by which they can reach out to consumers’ offline. For example one such channel successfully deployed is to send out emails to small business concerns which can provide multiple pools of subscribers at one go and urge them to ahead with the traditional method.

In the meantime, the government is trying its best to solve the technical problems which have caused this clutter. It has put together a team comprising of people of very high repute to look into the matter with outmost urgency. But the unfortunate part has been that, inspite of working 24×7, new issues have cropped up on an ongoing basis and have resulted in preventing consumers from accessing the market places online. Overall, the federal website HealthCare.gov seems to have the following major problems:

• Confusing prompts

• Overwhelming amount of information provided out of context

• Forms taking too much of time load

• Design Flaws in architecture

As per the earlier mandate, consumers had to apply for insurance coverage by 15^th of Dec 2013 and start getting covered by the 1^st of Jan 2014. But the unexpected turn of events; driven by technical issues of gigantic proportions has compelled the deadline to be pushed to Mar 31^st 2014. This will serve as a breather for people and ease out the process of registration.

You can hire developers from top healthcare software development companies in India who can help you build clinical and EHR/EMR software projects within allocated budgets and time schedules.

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How is mHealth metamorphosing Healthcare delivery?

Various researches have indicated the various benefits which implementation of mHealth is to bring forth in the healthcare industry. Although there is an inclination to quantify the benefits in monetary terms, the real focus should be on identifying the major changes in healthcare delivery which mHealth is going to bring about. The accuracy of monetary benefits is always going to be debatable but not the tangible benefits drawn from mHealth adoption. Of the many benefits predicted two areas which are going to see some real changes are remote patient monitoring and chronic disease management. In the event of the first, it will result in patients spending less time in hospitals and in outpatient visits. What has been really exciting is to have mHealth hardware getting directly linked to companion apps.

However, mHealth is expected to grow more so as Smartphone-based rather than being delivered through bespoke devices. As far as chronic disease management is concerned, from addressing high healthcare costs, inequality of care and medicinal waste, mHealth can actually bring about some serious positive change in lifestyle. Plus, it allows patients in some capacity to manage their health independently. For a chronic disease like diabetes, triggered mainly by incorrect lifestyle, mHealth can prove a really meaningful contribution in managing it well. For e.g. patients can use the proven apps to adhere to treatment regimes. Physicians can use make use of Patient portals to communicate directly with patients and provide information on disease management. All these and many more channels can be used to get patients to manage their blood glucose levels and reduce instances of emergency room visits and readmissions. Studies done have also indicated that with the younger lot, who unfortunately suffer from the disease, there are apps specially designed which use pictures and text messages which engage them to improve their compliance to care process at home. Also, it helps to get responses to queries from physicians in quick time. The texting program has seems to be gaining in popularity with text reminders ensuring better adherence.

Overall, these are early stages for adoption of mHealth apps. Most of the ones available currently do not have a high degree of sophistication, and are underutilized. However, it is laying the foundation for the next level of innovation to follow where the apps developed will be more suited to the changing healthcare landscape. Since a lot of changes related to healthcare IT are scheduled in the next few years, with some mandated by the federal government, the mobiles apps in the future will have to take into account the regulatory compliances to pervade into the lives of all stakeholders in the industry. The mHealth market is entirely in sync with the smartphone application market. Hence, the adoption is sure to pick from developed countries before it moves to others. In absolute terms, mHealth will see a exponential adoption since the number of people using smartphones and tablets is expected to be in billions in the next 5 years. That is also the time when it is expected to have entered the commercialization phase. But between then and now some major changes will also have to be done. For instance the regulations will have to be modified and defined in clear terms and the solutions have to handle more complex situations. The changes currently taking place in the operational models in the industry will create a an environment conducive to mHealth adoption. One of the studies done to identify the trends which will shape the market for mHealth had the following points to share

• The main driver for the mHealth usage will be the penetration of Smartphones
• There will customized mHealth applications available for smartphones or tablets
• Most of the applications will be native
• There are likely to be niche stores for mHealth apps
• The commercialization phase will require better regulations to be in place
• The market will be driven by the buyers
• The traditional health distribution channels will start adopting mHealth apps
• Countries with high smartphone penetration and healthcare budgets will be the main benefactors
• The chronic diseases will draw special focus
• New business models will come into play

With the adoption rate for mHealth apps on the rise, healthcare software testing also starts assuming increasing importance. It becomes vital and hence imperative to use app testers to test the robustness and security of the apps before they are rolled out to the patients and users.

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