by Katie Matlack, Medical Analyst at Software Advice

The iPad has been heralded as a gamechanger in a number of sectors. What will its impact be in home health? Pretty significant, I think. That prediction is based on the way the device empowers home health care workers to streamline logistics, and get more done. Below, I’ve identified three concrete ways the iPad is poised be a big hit within home health below (I’ve expanded further in a longer post on my blog at Software Advice, too).  

1. It can replace costly equipment. The iPad has a ton of processing power. And developers can easily build new apps. Given those two factors, the device is impressively extensible. Think about blood pressure cuffs that can plug into an iPad, or disposable EKG electrodes that do the same. Will home caregivers soon just carry a kit of electrodes, cuffs and sensors around? I imagine that day is not far off. After all, a company called Square has already built a credit card reader add-on for an iPhone.

2. It facilitates EHR adoption in home health. Though EHRs have been available for the home health specialty for some time, it’s never been simple for home health care givers to access these programs on the go… until now. The touchscreen is intuitive and offers an efficient way for caregivers to capture hundreds of data elements. Furthermore, a growing portion of the population is already familiar with how to use an iPhone and the iOS. This could decrease the levels of apprehension home health care givers have about using a tablet device.

3. It can transform logistics. As I wrote in my original article,

Home health workers can use existing iPad apps from gas station locators and mileage counters to the built-in camera to help them save time and be more efficient. For example, caregivers could use the camera to snap photos of receipts for expenses reports. Sharing information in real time is now as easy as a home health care team using a shared calendar. Some home health software programs have scheduling features built in, too.

For more discussion on how I think the iPad will transform home health, including a discussion of how the device might be used for accountability purposes in the future, please check out my recent blog post. If you have any comments, please feel free to send me an email at katie@softwareadvice.com I’d really appreciate the feedback! Thanks for reading.

 It is easier to find your imagination and your sense of humor with children. A person with dementia could make a mistake by not remembering you and you would sigh feeling slighted and sorry for their cognitive loss.

Babysitting recently, I easily became Mama Bear with Baby Bear, a delightful three year old, living in a cave under the stairs. We both felt the safety of our time together as we lay down on the floor over and over – many times – to go to sleep and wake up to Granma Bear’s breakfast of grits, bacon and fresh banana muffins.

Also recently I was told that a five year old child said “I love Julia. She makes the best pizza!”

“But,” I objected, “I didn’t make the pizza, I helped shovel pizza slices onto paper plates for hungry kids.” My informant joked, “You now know how you are remembered.” (Gee, to think that I could have made ALL those pizza pies!).

Please consider that this entire holiday season promotes the amazing cup of kindness we have shared once upon a time. “Auld Lang Syne” a Scots poem written by Robert Burns is traditionally used to celebrate and start the New Year in many English-speaking countries. In the days of “Auld lang syne” is equivalent to “Once upon a time.”  We are connected through centuries to the heart of memory, love, loss and gratitude. “For all these lives,” we say at remembrance services, “we give thanks.”

In the same spirit, the “Yes, Virginia” editorial written in 1897 is a reply to the letter from eight-year-old Virginia O’Hanlon who asked if there really was a Santa Claus. “Not believe in Santa Claus!” the editor wrote. “You might as well not believe in fairies.”

Especially grieving widows and widowers reply with a twinkle in their eyes that they may not be having a Christmas tree or other holiday rituals like usual but they are busy helping bring joy and gratitude for the holidays with Santa on this earth since ancient times.

Some elders are often cynical saying “It’s about the imagination – the importance of it. But as you get older like us, you lose your imagination along with everything else.”

But the imagination is extremely important. Another elder who is losing her eyesight and can no longer walk has to use her imagination to get by. She calls out in strong agreement, “Mine is getting stronger!”  Is yours getting stronger?  Do you still have your imagination?

By Julia Soto Lebentritt.  A published poet and producer, Julia Soto Lebentritt is author of As Long as You Sing, I’ll Dance: The bond not the burden – the blessing not the burn–out of caregiving (release date May 2012). She is a Bereavement Facilitator at the Community Hospice of Rensselaer County.

PART 5 of 5: REPORT CONCLUSION

FDA-CDRH’S RESPONSE TO INDUSTRY CONCERNS

As a result of industry’s stated concerns, the FDA-CDRH has started an initiative to ease medical device innovations to address unmet public health needs and the following criteria will be considered: the device or class of them must have serious or moderate impact on health and must affect many patients and their families; the device or class of them can be improved or prevented by the development or re-design, and;  the device must not have been developed or re-designed due to government barriers.

As part of this initiative, the CDRH created a Council on Medical Device Innovation of participants from several federal agencies. Agencies represented include the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (HHS-CDC), the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (HHS-CMS), the Administration for Healthcare Research and Quality (HHS-AHRQ), the Department of Defense (DoD), the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).

The Council is meant to identify the most important unmet public health needs; the barriers to develop or re-design medical devices, and; actions the federal government can take to reduce those barriers while assuring the safety, effectiveness and quality of medical devices. It seeks input from the medical device industry, academia, patients and consumer advocacy groups, professional trade organizations and other state and federal bodies.

“When human factors are taken into account, the industry is making a lot of changes at every stage of [the medical device marketing process] all the way through the approval step,” Johnson says. “Part of it is identifying user groups and training conditions appropriately, simulating real-world use during testing, and overall designing the product so that it is used properly. Even in the past year with the release of the FDA’s new draft guidance, manufacturers have been changing how they go about designing and testing medical devices. In many cases, these changes have been challenging, but the important thing is that the manufacturers are  changing how they are going through the process. It is a step in the right direction.”

Vladimire Herard is a freelance writer in Chicago. She was a health writer and online publication freelancer for the Guidance Channel, Longtermcare.com and States News Service for five years. For Community Development Publications, a publication chain in Silver Spring, Md., Ms. Herard wrote and edited newsletter articles about senior health and housing (Housing the Elderly Report and Aging News Alert); substance abuse prevention and treatment funding (Substance Abuse Funding Newsletter); health care financing (Inside HCFA); and food and product safety issues (Inside FDA) for four years. She has written articles about public education reform, county affairs, crime and community development for the Chicago Defender daily newspaper, the Syracuse Post-Standard and Syracuse Herald-American daily newspapers in New York state and the Pride of Syracuse monthly newspaper in New York state for five years. A print journalist for 18 years, Ms. Herard holds a master’s degree in newspaper from Syracuse University and a bachelor degree in liberal arts from Loyola University in Chicago.