Empowerment in Health Care, A Revolutionary Concept

Hawaii Multimedia Corporation, a Microsoft Certified Partner and applications developer provides next generation Internet, desktop, consulting and multimedia solutions. An experienced and established developer, HMC strives to create elegant solutions for tomorrow's world. Using the Ohana Health project as a real world case study, HMC's collaboration with research and clinical agencies re-enforce telemedicine's impact on healthcare.

The Ohana Health project, a collaboration between Hawaii Multimedia Corporation, the University of Hawaii, Waianae Coast Comprehensive Health Center and Georgetown University is a real world study demonstrating the positive effects of technology and the Internet in diabetes management. HMC provides the project with technical support, Internet access, web design and application development. Along with the work of the clinical agency, HMC's system and software design helps to empower both doctors and patients.

Empowerment
Empowerment is a strong word in the medicine field. Traditionally, it has always been that only doctors be empowered to handle patients’ health. However, with today’s rising healthcare costs and changes in the healthcare industry, doctors have been forced to cut down on treatment time, while patients are forced to pay more. As a result, patients have never been truly empowered with the ability to monitor and manage their condition effectively. Doctors on the other hand have never had sufficient time or resources to give patients this empowerment.

With recent technological and scientific advances, the Internet has changed many of the shortcomings of patient empowerment. HMC has demonstrated that partnership with research and clinical agencies can create an unprecedented synergy in empowering patients and making diabetes management easier to manage.

Telemedicine in the Next Century
The Ohana Health Project is a telemedicine demonstration project. The primary focus of the project is the empowerment of patients in caring for their own health. Patients monitor their diabetes measurements at home by using a special device and the Internet. Patient measurements are then uploaded to a central system for analysis, feedback and reporting. Using this system, both patients and doctors gain access to vital measurements 24 hours a day. This system gives both patients and doctors the power to monitor and analyze data at any time.

Network Supported Self-Care
These integrated telemedicine capabilities (computer assisted monitoring and screening) are capable of delivering responsive advice and treatment to patients with chronic disease, including diabetes, hypertension and asthma. In-home monitoring of diabetes patients equipped with glucose measuring devices together with PCs and Internet connections has already shown enhanced healthcare effectiveness due to improved patient compliance and physician responsiveness. Data handling and services of monitoring, screening and communication functions are all directly supported on the Project’s website: www.ohanahealth.org

Benefits of Patients Empowerment
The benefits of self-care empowerment and home monitoring with the present Internet technology and web infrastructure are already well demonstrated. The integration of electronic medical records (from databases at laboratories, insurance companies and pharmacies) will further enhance responsive and personalized services directly online.

Patient compliance and satisfaction rise significantly, while physicians improve their availability (electronically) and their productivity in terms of delivering care that is more effective. The initial success of the project indicates the reality of a paradigm shift for medical care delivery that would make the healthcare system more effective, responsive and productive. More importantly, patient empowerment for self-care can only improve their own quality of life.

Technology Integration
Hawaii Multimedia Corporation is playing a key technology integration role in this revolutionary move to network supported healthcare. Such a monitoring/screening system is built on the foundation of autonomous agents. Named Screening/Monitoring Agent System for Home-care (SMASH), it employs data triggered, time activated and event driven agents to achieve: a) programming language independence, b) autonomous & asynchronous actions, c) distributed database integration; and d) Multi-Processor Execution & Scalability.

Such an “engine” is capable of “driving” other diseases, serving a broad variety of remote monitoring applications in medicine, and with further extensions, achieving a totally online and distributed virtual clinic.