These Are a Few of My Favorite Health Care Innovations

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens
Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens
Brown paper packages tied up with strings
These are a few of  my favorite things.

Song, “My Favorite Things,” by Richard Rodgers, Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein, II, for musical, The Sound of Music, 1959

Empowerment of Individuals is a key part of what makes  open source work, since in the end, innovations tend to come from small groups, not from large, structured efforts.

Tim O’Reilly (born 1954), founder of O’Reilly Media  and supporter of open source software

April 7, 2012 –   These are six of my favorite health care innovations.  You can bring up their websites by typing the following names into Google search.  I have personal experience with each of these innovations,  but I have no vested financial interests in any of these enterprises.

1.       Instant Medical History – Empowers patients to enter their chief complaints, symptoms, family and social histories online, guided by a Q&A clinical algorithm. Empowers physicians, armed with an online narrative history,  to get to the root of the clinical problem immediately,  saving 6 to 8 minutes per patient,  increasing  coding reimbursement,  and allowing  patients to leave the office with a complete electronic medical history in hand.

2.       Emmi Solutions.com -  Empowers patients by giving them  a pre-procedure video of precisely what to expect.  Empowers  physicians and hospitals  by educating and preparing  patients for the eventualities and thereby avoiding  misunderstanding  to  malpractice suites based on unexpected surprise or complicatiomns.

3.      Shape Medical Systems -  Empowers patients by avoiding risks of  treadmill coronary risk  and giving them a precise estimate of risks of hospitalization and death from heart  or lung disease. Empowers physicians  by  allowing them to differentiate causes of dyspnea in settings such as the medical office or health fitness settings  using portal equipment  with no risks, thereby not requiring  physical presence of cardiologist.

4.      Nuance Healthcare  - Empowers physicians by allowing them to use dictation and their own voice to summarize and articulate a patient’s problems , Empowers physicians to  enter  patients narrative into an electronic record in plain English.

5.       American Telecare – Empowers homebound chronically ill patients to use ordinary phone lines to alert caregivers to their complications and concerns using  an audiovisual beside device,  and empowers doctors and nurses to directly visualize patients,  to read body language, to listen to heart sounds and lungs,  to measure blood  oxygen,  blood pressure,  pulse, and weight without being physically present.

6.      Vaso-Wraps – Empowers patients, particularly  diabetics and others with peripheral vascular insufficiency, to warm their cold legs and cold feet, with a simple device they  can attach and wear themselves, to increase  vasodilatation and blood flow to the legs

Tweet:  Favorite clinical innovations - Instant Medical History,  Emmi Solutions. Shape  Systems, Nuance Healthcare, Vaso-wraps, American Telecare.