Patient Involvement in HealthCare

A prevailing opinion posits that better patient health can be greatly influenced by more patient involvement. There are several forms of patient involvement:

• Diet & Exercise
• Disease Management
• Compliance to Physician orders
• Quitting unhealthy practices (drinking, smoking, etc…)
• Better awareness of health concerns through transparent data (Patient Healthcare Records)

Healthcare 2.0 [ “a new buzz word” or a “real trend”? ]

Whatever you want to call it, there are many healthcare initiatives that hope to transform the industry by empowering patients and pushing consumerism into the health care industry. Many of these initiatives take direct aim at communicating with the patient & empowering the patient.

Health 2.0 Site Series

Over a series of posts I’ll be looking at various offerings. Each offering will come in 2 posts

1. A fairly comprehensive breakdown of the site features
2. Trying to understand some of the technical detail behind each site (looking behind the HTML curtain)

 

My first post is on KEAS:

Keas: (http://www.keas.com) [ Take Charge of Your Health ] Keas surveys users for basic Health Data (height, weight, chronic diseases, family history) and can pull PHR data from Microsoft HealthVault & Google Health.

Keas Tracks 5 categories relating to Health

1) Lab Results :

Tracks your lab results and presumably analyzes them to help you understand them. There is a rather long winded cautionary note that lab results in and of themselves are not particularly useful when making diagnosis or health care decisions.

2) Vital Signs :  (see below : I entered Height/weight)

Track various types of personal healthcare metrics

2) Medication List:

 You can add individually (do a drug search) or import.

ADD:

Import:

3) Personal Journals

• Meal Journal
• Mood Journal
• Exercise Journal:

4) Miscellaneous Personal Information

• Basic Information (gender, DOB, height, weight…)
• Interests ( manage health & wellness, personalized feedback, help w/ blood pressure…)
• Medical History ( Smoker?, medical conditions { cholesterol, high blood pressure …} )
• Family History ( Cancer, Heart Disease, … )

 

Keas categorizes Vital Signs in a color coded scale.

As an example, I entered my weight versus height (190lbs vs 6 ft) and keas determined my BMI is high, sadly I’m in the orange, overweight region of the scale.

Given these color coded highlights, I can then go to the Health Plans portion of Keas and can sign up for plans that will get me into the green:

Sign Up for Health Plans to get into the green:

Keas wants to be the Health Plan market place on the web. Third parties provide various health plans that they charge for, Keas takes a small portion of the sale, like Amazon marketplace, and the patient can follow the plan. Several third parties are already providing plans (healthwise, minute clinic, …)

1. Blood Pressure News & Tips
2. Breast Cancer News
3. Cholesterol News
4. Weight loss – I need this one

   

Join the plan and get various links, tools and alerts

I signed up for Weight loss provided by the Keas Team. There were supporting tools in varios categories:

1. References (Obesity overview, Fitness Overview, Healthy Eating …)
2. Interactive Tools (BMI Calculator, Calorie Counters, etc…)
3. Other Web Links (Obesity from CDC, NYTimes Health Guide, Obesity from Mayo Clinic)
4. Answers TV ( videos describing obesity ) [ link ] ( from Yahoo Web Services)

Keas provides a personalized “Live Feed”

Based on the plans you’ve selected and personal goals you have set, Keas will then provide:

1. Personalized Health news
2. Pertinent Blog Posts
3. To do’s for plans or personal goals

Keas Notification using email or SMS

Words from of Keas Founder

[Link] from WSJ (All Things Digital) by Kara Swisher  [ october 7th ]

The former head of Google Health, Adam Bosworth, officially unveiled his much anticipated health-care start-up today at the Health 2.0 conference in San Francisco, showing off a site that will offer step-by-step and personalized “care plans,” as well as many kinds of online tools to better understand the data and tips on how to stay healthy.

…

As it turns out, Google Health is, in fact, one of Keas’s partners at launch, along with Microsoft HealthVault, Quest Diagnostics, Healthwise, DiabetesMine and Dr. Greene Pediatrics.

Bosworth said he hopes to attract many others to make innovative plans, much as developers make apps for smart phones.

..

Keas, which is backed by Atlas Ventures and Ignition Partners and has 25 staffers, is allowing free use of its care plans now, but will eventually charge for use of certain features.