Electronic Health Reporter

Guest post by Stein Soelberg, director of marketing, KORE Telematics

As a provider of machine-to-machine (M2M) wireless networking services specifically designed for connecting mHealth solutions, KORE is approached every day with new use-case scenarios where telemedicine can provide life-saving or quality-of-life improving solutions for patients.

Currently, there are many health conditions that are being positively affected by the growth of mHealth applications; however, the top five health conditions for telemedicine treatment are active heart monitoring, blood pressure, diabetes, prescription compliance and sleep apnea.

1. Active heart monitoring. For at-risk patients, wireless heart monitoring devices have already proven to reduce hospitalization through early detection of heart failure. In addition, these devices are able to limit the time that physicians spend looking at data that is not pertinent, since they only send notifications with information that is outside an acceptable range.

2. Blood pressure. Wireless sensor nodes have become cost-effective, compact and energy efficient, which allows for continuous cycle reporting and electronic dispatch in urgent situations. It is important, however, to distinguish in this category between “critical monitoring” and “convenience monitoring.” The former are able to account for stress, eating habits and other external triggers more completely and pinpoint life-or-death issues. The latter are iPhone Apps for the health conscious consumer.

3. Diabetes. Wireless glucose monitoring devices can send alerts to patients and doctors alike when values move outside an acceptable range. These devices can also monitor for dietary intake to help impact a patient’s lifestyle choices.

4. Prescription compliance. On the surface this is an easy one. Patient health risks — and the risk of hospital admission — get greatly reduced by patients taking their medications as directed. But there is also a need to ensure that people take entire drug courses and eliminate the potential for re-prescribing. Literally billions of dollars each year reach their expiration date in patient’s medicine cabinets. Additional intangible benefits include fewer provider phone calls, and even shorter wait times in provider offices, by eliminating visits from improper prescription utilization.

5. Sleep Apnea. The thing that is really interesting about telemedicine devices for sleep apnea is that they can handle both investigatory and direct treatment. The two-way nature of the device can report on sleep patterns, body position and breathing to refine research and treatment course for any given patient. There is a direct cost saving here as well, since the devices directly eliminate the need for expensive Polysomnography exams and limit the need for overnight hospital stays, on an ongoing basis.

These mHealth applications are helping to promote more efficient use of medical equipment and resources, ensuring that devices and medication are being used as prescribed, improving patient outcomes by providing real-time data, improving patient quality of life, decreasing treatment costs and minimizing travel to and from offices and hospitals to allow for ease in care. Overall, the rise of mHealth/telemedicine will drastically and positively affect the lives of patients with a wide variety of health conditions.

Stein leads a team whose responsibility is to own the branding, advertising, customer engagement, loyalty, partnership and public relations initiatives designed to propel KORE into the 21^st century. With more than 15 years of technology marketing experience in the business to business software, Internet services and telecommunications industries, Stein brings a proven track record of launching successful MVNOs and building those brands into leaders.