IBM, Google and the Continua Health Alliance announced new software that will enable personal medical devices used for patient monitoring, screening and routine evaluation to automatically stream data results into a patient’s Google Health Account or other personal health record (PHR).
This breakthrough extends the value of PHRs to consumers and also helps to ensure that such records are current and accurate at all times. Once stored in a PHR, the data can also be shared with physicians and other members of the extended care network at a user’s
Using IBM software to connect personal medical devices to Google Health and other health-record systems will allow patients to exchange vital health information with their doctors and other health services professionals more easily, in real-time. As a result, health professionals can provide more timely feedback to patients on their conditions, suggest treatments, and help improve overall quality of life. According to World Health Organization, chronic diseases like diabetes afflict more than 600 million, more than one billion are overweight, and the number of people older than 60 years will reach 1.2 billion by 2025.
Google Health allows users to store, manage, and share their medical records and personal health information securely online. Google Health was officially launched last May, and is free to users and available online.
“Our partnership with IBM will help both providers and users gain access to their device data in a highly simplified and automated fashion,” said Sameer Samat, Director for Google Health. “IBM has taken an important step in providing software that enables device manufacturers and hospitals to easily upload recorded data into a PHR platform, such as Google Health.”
IBM integrated the capabilities of Information Management, Business Intelligence and the WebSphere Premises Server sensor event platform with Google Health. The new IBM solution will be able to support a wide variety of use cases, including chronic disease management, health and wellness, and elderly care, both in the United States as well as in countries and health-services enterprises around the world. It will leverage the power of Services-Oriented Architectures, so that the partners can quickly build increasing volumes of flexible solutions for healthcare consumers and services providers based on modular components. The sollution will also support the rapid growth of open standards through the power of the Continua Alliance, which is dedicated to enabling interoperable healthcare products and solutions, and the development of solutions using the Google Health open platform.
“By harnessing the rapidly growing use of remote patient monitoring across every part of the healthcare services industry, our new IBM solution greatly increases the real-time value of PHRs for consumers everywhere,” said Dan Pelino, General Manager, IBM Healthcare & Life Sciences Industry. “Open standards-based systems and technologies – freely available to anyone interested in using them – are key to fueling the development of systems that can share and exchange vital healthcare information on a timely basis, whenever and wherever it’s needed.”
IBM developed the software based on guidelines from Continua Health Alliance, an organization dedicated to enabling interoperable personal healthcare products and solutions. It is also based in part on key open-source software available now from Eclipse and Open Health Tools, which are open-source communities dedicated to supporting advancements in healthcare.