The golden years are becoming that much easier with each passing year thanks to quality of life improvements made possible through technological breakthroughs. Tech is empowering seniors to age in place much longer than anticipated. Furthermore, tech innovation is enhancing medical equipment and medications, ultimately improving seniors’ quality of life.
Data Analysis for Improved Care
Machine learning and artificial intelligence is significantly enhancing healthcare for seniors across the United States as well as the rest of the world. Tech is now capable of analyzing information in an incredibly efficient manner. Between health monitoring systems, smart watches for seniors and in-depth data analysis, there are all sorts of new and creative ways to monitor senior health.
Predictive analytics will likely prove quite important in the future for regular doctors, dentist for sale practices and others, ultimately empowering healthcare workers to predict seniors’ health challenges. It is quite possible predictive analytics will soon accurately predict a patient’s likelihood for a potentially devastating fall, a heart attack, stroke or other medical problem. The prudent use of such predictive analytics will make it easier for seniors to obtain the care they need for high-quality living throughout the entirety of the golden years.
Though the United States has some of the cleanest drinking water in the world, contaminants in the water are inevitable. A contaminant is defined as anything that’s not water, after all. Most are harmless even as they give the water a bad taste, smell or strange color. Others are actively harmful. Here are five of the more common contaminants and what can be done about them.
Arsenic
Arsenic is a naturally occurring metal, but it is also a carcinogenic poison. Besides causing cancer, arsenic can damage the body’s circulatory and nervous systems as well as the liver, kidneys, lungs, heart and bladder. Arsenic is found in the rocks and soil that drinking water flows through and around.
Nitrates
Nitrates can also be found naturally in the water, but they are also byproducts of fertilizers used on crops or lawns then washed into the water supply. They can also enter the water supply through the effluvium found in septic tanks, and soil can change nitrogen into nitrates. Nitrates are especially problematic for children and pregnant women because they block red blood cells from carrying oxygen.
Sneeze guards are highly transparent and can be easily installed in residential and commercial applications and do not require special mounting hardware. These clear-plastic guards are effective towards preventing the spread of germs and pathogens in commercial places like banks, restaurants, pharmacies, and check-out registers.
With these resilient materials, germs can be easily contained. They maintain optical clarity while providing durability, strength, and lightness. Plastic sneeze guards are easy to clean and sanitize, leaving it clean and safe to use in a business environment.
Plastic Sneeze Guards For Customer Service Partition Solutions
Plastic sneeze guards can be customized to suit your counter area, thereby creating the ideal solution for your business needs. If your customer partition area needs a plastic sneeze guard with a wide breadth and no pass-through section, plastic sneeze guards offer you the right solution. You can also have a portable screen guard that can be moved from one place to another.
We’re seeking nominations for the most innovative health IT companies of 2020!
These organizations must serve healthcare (obviously) in some way, and are on the cutting edge of healthcare technology innovation. You’re doing something mind-blowing, or life-saving, and your passion for serving the healthcare community oozes throughout your organization! Your mission, vision and values are apparent and evident to all who come in contact with your organization without your having to recite what each of these are.
If you feel you’re one of healthcare’s most innovative, we’d love to hear from you. The application is simple (and free)! Simply provide responses to the following questions. Be as detailed as possible. Remember, too, that whatever you submit in response to these questions will be published on this site.
We look forward to reading your responses and learning about the innovation you’re leading and driving in this awesome, wonderful and complicated world of healthcare!
What is the single-most innovative technology you are currently delivering to health systems or medical groups?
How is your product or service innovating the work being done in these organization to provide care or make systems run smoother?
What is the primary need fulfilled by the product or service?
What is the ROI of said product or service? Provide real examples of verifiable ROI of the product or service when used in or by a health system or medial group.
Provide specific examples of implementation and outcomes use cases.
Who are some of the clients and organizations served by the company? Name them.
How has the innovation advanced the field of healthcare or the practice of care?
How is the innovation changing lives — specifically?
What is the company’s go-forward strategy? What’s next, which problem is the organization working on now, and planning to solve in the future?
What are the most significant lesson learned by delivering the innovation, product or service to health systems or medical groups?
What holds your organization accountable to its mission, vision and operating values?
List your organization’s mission, vision and operating values.
List your website and contact information.
Feel free to provide actual testimony from a user regarding the product and how it has solved a problem, created efficiency or improved processes at the point of care.
Again, please provide as much detail as possible.
When complete, please submit the answers to these questions through our Contact page.
Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, telemedicine visits have been able to provide an increasing number of patients with virtual access to quality care without requiring in-person appointments.
However, many patients are still reluctant to accept telemedicine as an option, due to fears concerning out of pocket costs. Let us go over how telemedicine companies charge patients and the different ways that it can be the more affordable option.
How Telemedicine Companies Charge You
Paying Cash Per Visit
Several telemedicine companies ask patients to pay cash for each visit, which allows uninsured patients quick and easy access to healthcare professionals. A 2017 study shows that the average cost of a telemedicine visit is $79, compared to $149 for the average doctor’s office visit.
Paying Through Insurance
Many telemedicine companies work ‘one on one’ with doctors, who bill your telemedicine visit to your health insurance, providing an even more affordable option for many patients. As telemedicine becomes increasingly more popular, health insurance plans are starting to offer coverage for telemedicine visits on a more widespread basis. Your insurance may even cover medication prescribed to you by a telemedicine provider.
How Telemedicine Saves You Money
Eliminates Transportation Costs
An important way that telemedicine is more affordable than in-person visits is that virtual appointments eliminate the cost of transportation. With telemedicine, you can enjoy access to quality care without paying for public transportation, ride-sharing, gas or parking costs. This can be especially beneficial for families living in rural areas and forced to travel long distances to meet with their provider in person.
Eliminates Childcare Costs
Another factor making telemedicine more affordable is the elimination of childcare costs associated with a parent’s ‘in office visit’. Parents can attend a 15-20 minute virtual doctor’s appointment in the comfort of their own home, without the worry and expense of hiring a sitter for their children, traveling the 2-3 hours to and from their appointment, sitting in the waiting room, and time meeting with the doctor.
More Affordable Than In-Person Visits
Even paying out of pocket for telemedicine appointments, they are still more affordable than in-person visits. The cost of a telemedicine session is not only less out of pocket but results in lower co-pays if your coverage is through insurance. Cost sharing will vary based on your insurance plan, but by and large insurers compensate providers for telemedicine but at lower rates, which translates into lower patient co-pays too.
Numerous follow-up appointments can rack up costly co-pays and transportation costs for such a short visit. With a quick telemedicine appointment, you can continue receiving quality care at an affordable price, right at home or work.
Telemedicine platforms offer the more affordable healthcare option for both the insured and uninsured, while also eliminating the costs associated with physical visits. Be sure to check out platforms like Adviiseto find out how your insurance can help cover telemedicine visits. It is the modern doctor’s house call.
By Dr. Chris Hobson, chief medical officer, Orion Health.
Dr. Chris Hobson
Health information exchanges (HIEs) represent a key piece of health information technology and are ideal tools to assist providers and managers in flattening the COVID-19 case count and fatality curves. HIEs were designed from the start to enable “right care to the right patient at the right place.”
Getting real-time, complete clinical information to where it’s needed, when it’s needed assists clinicians in the delivery of individual patient care. By virtue of the high-quality data held on every patient across a population, HIEs are also rapidly becoming essential tools in population health management. Real-time, high-quality data is essential for clinical and public health decision making.
The emergence of COVID-19 illustrates how high-quality individualized data can be leveraged to help a population level effort.
COVID-19 offers the challenge and opportunity to apply HIE capabilities in a flexible way to the management of a novel infectious disease where public health measures of social distancing, contact tracing, testing and isolation are so far the only real options for management.
A range of HIE functionalities and capabilities add value here. One is the ability to generate configurable notifications to providers based on new information arriving in the HIE. The first notification type tells providers when their patients have tested positive. This can be achieved easily based on the arrival of a positive test for COVID-19 into the HIE. Providers can subscribe to alerts for specific patients, or all of their patients.
Technology has taken over the world we live in today. If you take a closer look at your surroundings, it is not wrong to say that technology has penetrated every area of life. The education system has adopted technology, and e-learning is replacing traditional teaching methods.
Different devices are making it more convenient for everyone to be more efficient and productive. It is the technological advancements that introduced artificial intelligence. Moreover, globalization is also the result of technological betterments.
When you take a look at the healthcare industry, it is surprising to see the massive changes this sector is facing due to technology. The betterments have made it simpler to conduct complex treatments, and development in pharmaceutics is breathtaking.
Today’s health-conscious society must be blessed to have advanced technology available for assistance. Where one lacked the confidence to work out and improve, is now in the best shape due to feedback from smartwatches. There are many benefits to involving technology in your lifestyle. A healthy lifestyle seemed a difficult task to achieve. However, the technology significantly helps in achieving the goal.
Are you eager to learn about the contributions technology can make to a healthy lifestyle? Here is what you should know.
Keep Track Of All Your Activities
As unbelievable as it sounds, technology helps you to keep track of all your activities. The number of steps you walk every day, your heart rate, and blood pressure do not require appointments to the clinic anymore. Your smartwatch has all the features or applications that help you keep these things recorded. In case you have high or low blood pressure, the watch can warn you immediately. It is incredible to know that a small gadget on the wrist can track all these significant health contributors. Moreover, you can control your disturbed sleep cycle too.
An electrocardiogram (ECG), also abbreviated as EKG, is a portable monitor that measures, records and shows the electrical impulses of the heart. It is a machine that measures and assesses the rhythm of the heart along with its blood flow, muscle thickness, and chamber size including the structural problems with heart valves. The purpose is to verify whether the heart is functioning accurately or not.
The doctors who use this electrocardiogram machine are considered as the arrhythmia team. They are supposed to evaluate and identify disturbances of the electrical system of the heart such as heart attacks, heart diseases, inaccurate blood flow, etc. The arrhythmia team connects to meet expectations in order to manage the cardiac arrhythmias including:
Arrhythmias
Artery diseases
Cardiomyopathy
Congenital heart diseases
Electrical heartbeats and signals
Heart attacks and failures
Valvular heart diseases
Types of Electrocardiograms
Basically, there are a few types of EKG machines that doctors use to check for a variety of cardiac and pulmonary conditions that are mentioned below.
Cardiopulmonary Exercise Testing (CPET)
Cardiopulmonary exercise testing is considered a non-invasive method to evaluate and assess the performance of the heart and lungs. Mainly, this test focuses on detecting diseases related to cardiac and pulmonary conditions.
Exercise Electrocardiogram (EKG)
An exercise electrocardiogram, abbreviated as EKG and ECG, is a special kind of test that examines an individual’s heart rate and heart health while they exercise. The purpose of this test is to determine any heart problems, while the patient walks or pedals a monitored machine to make it easier for symptoms to become visible to the doctor.
This test is also called a stress test or a treadmill test as symptoms become visible while exercising. This can detect coronary artery disease to suggest heart surgery or safe levels of exercising.
Holter Monitor
Holter monitor is a type of electrocardiogram test that is used in order to monitor the ECG tracing for a longer period of time, mainly for 24 hours in a continuous cycle. In this test, small patches of plastic, called electrodes, are supposedly placed at certain body parts including chest, arms, and legs to connect them with the machine through lead wires. Then for further interpretation, the electrical ability of the heart is examined and measured to be printed out for the physician.
Resting 12-lead Electrocardiogram
The resting 12-lead ECG is a type of electrocardiogram that is used for standardized testing of the electrical functionalities of the heart. This test is performed with the patient lying while the machine records the heart’s activity through the help of 12 electrodes. These electrodes or leads are attached to the chest, arms, and legs of the patient just like the holter monitor.
This machine is also used as a part of routine check-ups for a lot of patients for the screening of their heart.
Signal-Averaged Electrocardiogram
This is considered as a handheld monitor that is used for multiple ECG tracings over a time period of 20 to 25 minutes. The purpose of this is to capture and measure the abnormal heartbeats continuously that may occur at irregular intervals.
Though the United States has some of the cleanest drinking water in the world, contaminants in the water are inevitable. A contaminant is defined as anything that’s not water, after all. Most are harmless even as they give the water a bad taste, smell or strange color. Others are actively harmful. Here are five of the more common 
Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, telemedicine visits have been able to provide an increasing number of patients with virtual access to quality care without requiring in-person appointments.
Technology has taken over the world we live in today. If you take a closer look at your surroundings, it is not wrong to say that technology has penetrated every area of life. The education system has adopted technology, and e-learning is replacing traditional teaching methods.