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Philips Healthcare will be offering a slightly different take on the personal health record at this year’s HIMSS12 Conference and Exhibition.
The Personal Health Book project, slated to begin beta testing later this spring, is designed to operate as a portal for the patient once he or she leaves the hospital, providing a link to caregivers and the information needed to continue the care plan at home.
“In many respects it is similar to a PHR,” said Lisa Runci, global product manager for Philips’ Andover, Mass.-based healthcare division. “But they kind of put the patient on an island.” Whereas PHRs act as repositories for information, she pointed out, the Personal Health Book is designed as a portal for the exchange of information.
“It really is about connecting the patient with the information (and) connecting the caregivers with the information they need to make informed (clinical) decisions,” she added.
Once tested and ready for distribution, Philips will market the Personal Health Book as a hosted service for providers or caregiver services. The goal, said Runci, is to convince providers of the need to look at care transition and management as a whole, in order to reduce costly hospital readmissions or further medical complications that occur when the patient isn’t care for at home.
“The whole objective is to engage the patient at their own level of higher self-management,” Runci said. “We need to make this really, really engaging. Part of that is building the integration points with telehealth, to make this a comprehensive program … that looks at care transition as a whole.”
Runci said Philips will show off the Personal Health Book project at next week’s HIMSS12 Conference and Exhibition and the Venetian Sands Expo Center in Las Vegas, as part of a themed exhibit showing the patient’s journey through the healthcare system.
In related news, Philips this week announced a partnership with eHealth Global Technologies, which uses technology to retrieve medical records and images and securely deliver them to providers. Based in Rochester, N.Y., eHGT’s services are targeted at helping cancer patients gather their healthcare records and deliver them to their oncologist and other specialists involved in their care.
“Anyone who has been touched by cancer knows that the waiting time between diagnosis and treatment can be very stressful and chaotic for patients,” said Pat Venters, general manager of Philips Healthcare’s Oncology Care Cycle, in a Feb. 14 press release announcing the deal. “As care becomes increasingly multidisciplinary, oncology professionals are looking for ways to better connect information across the care continuum. eHGT shares our commitment to providing service and technology solutions that streamline the delivery of coordinated, patient-centric care.”
“eHGT enables the secure and accurate collection and management of patient records, images and pathology slides, no matter the source or format of the data, providing better patient care while improving the efficiency of cancer centers,” said Michael Margiotta, chief executive officer of eHGT, which serves half of the nation’s top 100 hospitals. “We share Philips’ goal of making important patient information accessible to clinicians whenever and wherever it’s needed for confident and timely decision making.”
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