Toronto, ON (November 15, 2007) – Two leaders in health-care information and communication technology unveiled the commercial availability today of a new initiative to improve patient record confidentiality and cut home health-care professionals' paperwork and administrative time by as much as 10 per cent.
MedShare, an award-winning provider of home health care information and communication technologies, and Research In Motion (RIM), creators of the revolutionary BlackBerry® introduced MedShare for BlackBerry (MBB) at the e-Health 2007: Paths to Transformation conference in Quebec City.
MBB integrates MedShare's popular electronic health record software, MedShare HC, with RIM's globally recognized hand-held communication device, the BlackBerry.
"We believe this mobile technology really is a transformation in the way home health-care workers will deliver medical services," says Barry Billings, president of MedShare. "It eliminates duplicate data entry and paper transactions that tie up so much time and represents a significant burden to health-care workers."
Health-care professionals in the community engage in manual record keeping, which consumes upwards of two hours per day. In the past, attempts to automate this with web-based technologies failed because continuous web access could not be guaranteed. MBB addresses this problem. First, it allows home care professionals to document medical treatments and clinical procedures as they engage in treatment, capturing all patient data at the point of care. Secondly, because of Blackberry's unique approach to occasional disconnection, all data is stored locally and synchronized with servers when data access is available. In addition, health data privacy legislation requires first class data security. Blackberry delivers this through its advanced encryption technology. Finally, location-based technologies provide agencies real time data for routing and billing of home care professional's services as well as improving their safety by knowing where every worker is at any instant.
Billings calls the current home health environment a "perfect storm" for MBB.
"We've hit a critical mass," he says. "We have electronic health records available through MedShare, ubiquitous access through the BlackBerry, and society needing better health care access.Those three elements are combining to prompt the sector to re-invent how it delivers health care, and MBB is the answer."
Five clients have signed on to pioneer this technology. Four are medium-sized regional health care agency groups with up to 250-employees, and one is a large national agency with 4,000 staff.
"The home care industry's greatest challenge is that it must deliver the best home health care services possible while maintaining operational efficiency. I believe we can only meet this challenge through advanced technology solutions," says John Schram, president and CEO of We Care Health Services Inc., which services Canadian clients from coast to coast from 50 locations. We Care will join with MedShare and BlackBerry to pilot the new technology.
Home care is the fastest growing segment of the North American health care sector. In 2005, 2.1 million health-care workers provided medical services and daily-living assistance to (Number of clients) clients in their own homes.
About MedShare
MedShare is an award-winning provider of information and communication technologies to the North American home health care sector, which is the fastest growing segment of the health care sector. MedShare delivers electronic health record and agency management solutions to meet the clinical and administrative needs of home health care workers.
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For more information, please contact:
Barry Billings, President, MedShare
1-800-624-0014 or (519) 624-0014
Barry.Billings@MedShare.com
or
Barbara Toccacelli
Director of Human Resources and Communications, We Care Home Health Services
416-922-5387 x 103