BeWell Mobile Technology's Vice President and General Manager Greg Seiler called on the federal government to outline better guidelines for getting the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to recognize the value of mobile-based health systems and subsequently offer reimbursement for their use.
"It'd help to have clear support and guidance coming from Washington for how to enter the CMS system and get reimbursed for technologies that work," Seiler told attendees of the Wireless in Healthcare IT event held at a Senate office building earleir this week. "What are the metrics for demonstrating the technology works? How can we get them reimbursed? [Answers to these questions could help mHealth move forward] and help to mitigate some of the risks that we would otherwise enjoy taking on."
Seiler said his company, BeWell Mobile, is focused on disease management, wellness and research applications. Their aim is to increase patient compliance and adherence to therapeutic requirements, which leads to better patient outcomes and better cost efficiency for everyone. Seiler noted that some 48 percent of the U.S. population has been diagnosed with a chronic disease.
Here's a quick rundown of the general schematics of BeWell's compliance application framework, which serves as a good step-by-step for most of the mobile-based adherence programs out there, too:
1) Patient is prompted to follow their regimen via their mobile phones, which Seiler said was "just another computing device" but since "it's a ubiquitous one" it may be the best. In fact, by a margin of more than 5 to 1, Seiler said his patients prefer the cell phone interface today.
2) The patient then records their data, whether biometrics, symptomatic, environmental or other data.
3) The application creates instant reports and automated feedback via a Q&A session with the patient that lasts for less than a minute.
4) The patient then reviews the information and uploads it into the network so there is now an archived report, which they can review in the future.
5) Providers and case managers now have instant and real-time access to the data and related longterm, archived reports.
6) Health care providers can now discover trends in the patients conditions that could lead to changes in regimen. Seiler said more often than not, caregivers using his applications have indeed made tweaks to the regimens based on the data collected. These changes typically would have occurred at a later date since the doctor would not have seen this type of data until the next in-office visit.
