Building a multicenter telehealth network to advance chronic disease management.

The use of telehealth solutions has proved to improve clinical management of chronic diseases, expand access to healthcare services and clinicians, and reduce healthcare-related costs. The project aims at improving Heart Failure (HF) management through the utilization of a Telemedicine and Personal Health Records systems that will assist HF specialist in Colombo, Sri Lanka to monitor and consult with remote HF patients. A telehealth network will be built at an international site that connects five remote telehealth clinics to a central clinic at a major University Hospital in Sri Lanka where HF specialists are located. In this study, 200 HF patients will be recruited for nine months, 100 patients will be randomly selected for the treatment group and the other 100 will be selected for the control group. Pre, mid, and post study surveys will be conducted to assess the efficacy and satisfaction levels of patients with both care models. Moreover, clinical outcomes will be collected to evaluate the impact of the intervention on the treatment patients compared to control patients. The research aims at enhancing Heart Failure management through eliminating current health challenges and healthcare-related financial burdens.

Electronic health record functionality needed to better support primary care.

Electronic health records (EHRs) must support primary care clinicians and patients, yet many clinicians remain dissatisfied with their system. This article presents a consensus statement about gaps in current EHR functionality and needed enhancements to support primary care. The Institute of Medicine primary care attributes were used to define needs and meaningful use (MU) objectives to define EHR functionality. Current objectives remain focused on disease rather than the whole person, ignoring factors such as personal risks, behaviors, family structure, and occupational and environmental influences. Primary care needs EHRs to move beyond documentation to interpreting and tracking information over time, as well as patient-partnering activities, support for team-based care, population-management tools that deliver care, and reduced documentation burden. While stage 3 MU's focus on outcomes is laudable, enhanced functionality is still needed, including EHR modifications, expanded use of patient portals, seamless integration with external applications, and advancement of national infrastructure and policies.

Wireless application for complex wound management.

This project was to develop a web based wireless system to be used by community care nurses. Wound care constitutes approximately one half of home health care nursing visits. The system was implemented with a digital camera and a handheld computer with a wireless connection to a web based server. A database was used to control access to the clinical cases and to serve as a data repository. When new images were uploaded to the server a wound expert was notified via pager. The images and data could be viewed from any computer with an internet connection.