Corporations "continua" to push healthcare to the home

How will the healthcare system(s), burdened by a predicted shortage of doctors and nurses and costs ever-spiraling upwards, handle a boom in one of the most vulnerable populations, the elderly, who are especially vulnerable to chronic diesase like hypertension and diabetes?

Thanks to improving technology, healthcare providers and their patients will monitor and manage their conditions at home, according to the June 7, 2006 WSJ article "Corporate Alliance Aims to EaseUse of Technology in Health Care" (suscription needed). The biggest stumbling block to making it all work is a lack of standards. And this what Intel et al are hoping to change through a new joint nonprofit.

Twenty-two electronics and health companies announced a joint effort to help patients by making high-technology tools work better together.

The companies are forming a nonprofit organization, called the Continua Health Alliance, with initial members that include Intel Corp., International Business Machines Corp., Cisco Systems Inc., Samsung Electronics Co., Motorola Inc., Philips Electronics NV, Medtronic Inc., General Electric Co.'s GE Healthcare unit, Kaiser Permanente and Partners HealthCare System Inc., among others. Additional companies are expected to join.

Participants said they were responding to an impending crisis, as a fixed number of doctors and nurses will confront an expected explosion in chronic diseases.

"We've lost the capacity battle already," says Joseph Kvedar, vice chairman in dermatology at Harvard Medical School and director of a Partners unit that offers remote health-care services. "We have to move quickly."

The only solution, Continua backers argue, is to shift more care to the home, using devices that monitor the condition of patients and transmit data to medical professionals for analysis and recommendations.

Besides helping patients help themselves, the companies hope to make it easier for family members to remotely monitor the condition of patients.

But there are many obstacles, including outdated paper-based record systems in many doctors' offices, as well as incompatible products coming from hardware and software makers.

Standard-setting bodies already have been formed to address some of those issues. Continua hopes to go a step further, publishing guidelines so manufacturers can be assured that products they make will work with those from other firms.

"We will use the certification process to anoint different standards," said David Whitlinger, an Intel executive who is chairman of Continua.

Products that meet its guidelines will sport a logo that consumers can look for, as can hospitals trying to marry their information systems with home sensors. The venture also plans to lobby regulatory agencies to develop policies that help spread the use of certified technology, and make it easier for consumers to get reimbursed from insurers for using monitoring technology in the home.

Intel, which helped spearhead the effort, has made health care a priority, viewing the sector as an opportunity to sell more devices that use the company's microprocessor chips.