Sprint's wireless health efforts include clinician offerings, patient tools, ambulatory care connectivity and home health solutions, Sprint's VP of Industry Solutions Tim Donahue told MobiHealthNews in a recent interview.
"For telecoms, the focus used to be all about the healthcare provider," Donahue said. "It's not now and it shouldn't be. It's about the patient. That's what [Sprint CEO Dan Hesse] said during his keynote [at HIMSS earlier this month]. Patients with chronic illnesses have a lot of uncertainty in their lives and what they want is a lifeline for when they are feeling uncertain."
With wireless health they can enter biometric information or take a reading and check to see if it's outside their normal range, Donahue said. They could contact clinicians and establish a video chat session to put their minds at ease; Patients could use a connected stethoscope to allow clinicians to remotely listen to their lungs, he said.
"By reducing the number of visits to the hospital these services will bring down healthcare costs," Donahue said, "but it's not just about the costs. The last thing a patient wants to do is go to the hospital."
Of course, Sprint works closely with a number of industry partners for provider side wireless health solutions too, including GE Healthcare, mVisum, American TeleCare and others.
Sprint's partnership with American TeleCare to connect patients and care providers through wireless video so that clinicians can monitor, observe and intervene with the patient in an effort to prevent hospitalization. The offering includes video conferencing, patient interface and connectivity to biometric devices and runs over Sprint's 3G network.
Sprint also works with mVisum to send ECGs to clinicians phones. Donahue said mVisum works with most phones' operating systems, including BlackBerry devices. Viewing the ECG sent from an ambulance can help clinicians determine the patient's care path before they arrive at the facility which saves time and improves care. With Sprint's 4G network going live around the country, Donahue said that that ambulatory care could change dramatically as live video feeds of the patient in the ambulance could be streamed to the care facility so that clinicians can monitor the patient in real-time.
Sprint also enables home healthcare organizations to better manage their fleet of workers. Donahue said most home health workers can just use a simple flip phone with GPS to figure out their route for the day, track their mileage, store their daily care plan and verify the services they provide. For home care reimbursement is based largely on verification of service, so enabling home health workers to check off a list of to-dos electronically is a low-tech way of ensuring a good return on investment for the organizations.
"In next four years, home healthcare is going to at least double," Donahue said. "We better figure this out soon or once again it's just going to become another part of the cost curve."
