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Healthcare IT

Innovations for community care

By Jianggan Li | 10 March 2011

While traditionally personal health records had been more advocated than adopted, John sees the idea of providing a collaborative connection between patients and care providers maturing very fast over the past two years.

This is especially with countries across the world recognising and dedicating resources to provide better community care. “While each country has its own legislations, standards and practices, many of the challenges facing healthcare, such as ageing population and chronic diseases, are common to everyone,” says John Papandrea, SAP’s Senior Vice President and Global Health Sciences Head. “As patients outside hospital walls become increasingly important in the whole healthcare delivery process; a way to connect patients to healthcare organisations in a proactive fashion is therefore of real value to both parties.”

While many would think that family physicians will be able to play that role of gateway, Papadrea says in many cases this will be too time-consuming for family doctors to be effective. “For example, there are different types of doctors and nurses an autistic child needs to interact with on a continuous basis,” he says. “If every interaction has to be processed and forwarded by his primary care provider, it is going to be very time consuming, taking the family physicians’ from more valuable activities.”

Family physicians simply need to be kept in the loop so that they are aware of the situations and able to intervene should it be necessary.

One challenge for healthcare industry to allow more patient autonomy is that they are usually not disciplined. Papandrea says it is not the patients fault, but often because they do not have an effective collaborative environment with the physicians.

In addition to continuous engagements through SMS, phone calls and automatic alerts, Papandrea explains the innovative idea of creating a loyalty programme where patients accumulate points when they follow the doctors’ orders. The points, which are similar to air mileage, can then be turned into deductions for doctors’ fee or discounts when they next purchase medications (or other medical services) – a win-win situation which has been practised in many other industries.

Naturally care providers are able to set their loyalty programmes and in certain countries where policies allow, this is expected to stimulate competition.

This is what SAP has integrated in its new Collaborative e-Care Environment solution – a software suite that it launched a month ago. Papandrea explains that another advantage of a software solution that can be installed on multiple platforms, including Android & iPhone, is that patients do not have to carry an extra device. Many home care devices nowadays are dedicated embedded systems that patients often only use at home but not carry around – ‘intrusive’, as Papandrea puts it.

Spending more and more time in Asia these days, US-based Papandrea thinks that while adopting practices such as DRGs or clinical pathways, Asian countries could start with using them as guidelines with enticers, such that practitioners and organisations can get comfortable with the practices before they are made mandatory.

“Medicine that is practised with guidelines generates better results on average, as many studies have demonstrated,” says Papandrea. “Though finding the right enticer that works would require careful study of the country’s specific situations.”

Indeed, this would often need political will as it often means changes to the doctors’ reimbursement scheme.

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