With the rise of cell phones and connected devices, mobile technology has increasingly become integrated into every facet of our everyday lives. As these technologies continue to grow and develop at a rapid pace around us, it’s important to reflect not just on how far we’ve come, but also where we are and where we have yet to go.
Earlier this month, Wireless Week reached out to VirtuMedix General Manager and Telecommunication Systems VP Kaanan Sreedhar for his views on the future of mobile health technology and how innovations will influence the healthcare field. Now, we’ve connected with Joseph Mayer, a medical doctor and co-founder of the mobile health app Cureatr, to see how mobile health technology is already impacting care.
[Wireless Week] What prompted you to start Cureatr?
[Joseph Mayer] I attended Columbia medical school and then began my residency at Mount Sinai in Manhattan. While working in the ER during my residency, I experienced frustrating time delays when trying to communicate with other care providers. I discovered that this gap in communication is a country-wide issue that hospitals are facing. While still in my residency, I started working on Cureatr with Alex Khomenko, my co-founder, because we wanted to help clinicians communicate about patients during episodes of care and to improve our healthcare system for everyone involved.
[WW] How does Cureatr work? Is it more for patients or practitioners? How does it improve care?
[JM] Cureatr builds regional networks of Care Transition Notifications to provide real-time registration, admission and discharge event notifications to its users any time a member (patient) for whom they are responsible transitions care settings. The CTN Network includes hospitals, IDN’s, home care providers and skilled nursing facilities (SNFs) that provide Admission, Discharge and Transfer (ADT) feeds to Cureatr. Cureatr “listens” to these live feeds to identify when members are registered, admitted or discharged at surrounding facilities. When a match is identified, Cureatr delivers real-time push notifications through the mobile or desktop application, directly to the member’s care team. With Cureatr, our users are able to prevent hospital readmissions, thus saving time and resources for both hospitals and patients. We’re proud to have created a system that benefits both patients and care providers, because we know that it will drastically improve the healthcare experience.
[WW] How do you think Cureatr and other mobile health tech can improve healthcare services?
[JM] During a patient’s episode of care, there’s a short window of time to make a decision to admit or not admit them – maybe 15 minutes. Real-time event notifications give providers and care managers an opportunity to intervene during those few precious minutes. We focus on streamlining care, not adding layers. The overall goal is to reduce preventable hospital admissions and avoidable 30-day readmissions. With all of the advancements in technology that our generation has produced, we believe that the current healthcare system can be updated through services such as Cureatr’s and other healthcare innovators.
[WW] What do you see as a top need in healthcare that has yet to/can be addressed by mobile health technology?
[JM] As the industry shifts to a Value-Based Care model of payment, providers and payers are assuming more risk for the outcomes of their patients. This creates an immediate need to know in real-time when patients are receiving treatment to ensure that the appropriate care is delivered in a timely manner. As most large healthcare organizations have started issuing mobile devices or adopted BYOD policies for their workforce, there is a shift towards acceptance of mobile technologies being integrated into their workflows. I believe we’ll see evidence showing that patient outcomes are improving as mobile devices are used more effectively and ubiquitously across the care continuum.
For years, we’ve been talking about creating interoperable systems – getting everybody from HIEs to EMRs to payers to exchange data with one another. That effort needs to continue, and we’ll get there eventually. In the meantime, Cureatr is addressing the immediate need providers have, which is to know when and where their patients are receiving care.