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Saturday, September 24, 2011

Hunt Valley Publisher Milner-Fenwick Partners with Minnesota Mobile Health Application Developer on an Innovative Type of "Prescription"

Hunt Valley, MD (September 19, 2011)—Improving patient outcomes and reducing hospital readmission rates through the combination of mobile computing and prescribable educational videos is at the heart of a new approach to improving patient education in clinical settings.

The videos address key chronic health and preventive care topics that coach patients through concepts such as lifestyle changes, hospital safety, prescription medicine adherence and when to call the doctor. Called HealthClips Rx, the new multi-device platform is the product of a partnership between Milner-Fenwick, a long-time provider of patient education materials for health care facilities, and Preventice, a leading developer of mobile health applications.

According to the companies, the need for such a product is evidenced by a lack of health education that reportedly contributes $58 billion annually to U.S. health care spending. The National Patient Safety Foundation reports that nearly half of the adult population (roughly 90 million people) falls into the category of low or basic health literacy.

“More and more, patients want and need to take charge of their own health. HealthClips Rx takes patient education to a new level by providing institutions with a way to deliver on-demand, prescribed education videos anytime, anywhere,” said Jon Otterstatter, founder and CEO of Preventice. “Not only does HealthClips Rx make education accessible and engaging, but it can have a direct and measurable impact on quality of care and reduce the burden on nurses and staff.”

How it works
HealthClips Rx is used by hospitals and other health care facilities, to give their team members  (physicians, nurses, patient educators or discharge staff) the ability to quickly create and customize educational “health playlists” from over 435 titles via the Preventice HealthGuardian cloud platform.

Customized, on-demand content is then delivered through mobile and Internet-connected devices. According to Preventice and Milner-Fenwick, this powerful combination provides a consistent, interactive, and measurable educational format. HealthClips Rx follows the patient from bedside to home recovery and closes the health education gap. De-identified patient information can be securely logged into a facility’s EMR system and evaluated against readmission data to measure education effectiveness on an ongoing basis.

“Numerous studies, including several that have used Milner-Fenwick patient education videos with research subjects, have shown that patient education can have a dramatic impact on health outcomes,” said Richard Milner, CEO of Milner-Fenwick.

“To make it easier to integrate the videos into care, we needed a new kind of video that not only would take advantage of the Internet and mobile apps, but also could be used at just about any touch point in health care delivery. The result is HealthClips—short videos that act like ‘information building blocks’.  The videos are prescribed and assembled to meet the patient’s individual needs. This truly is the first step in integrating patient education videos into the delivery of care,” Milner added.

Benefits to healthcare providers
HealthClips Rx is based on the patient education materials developed and sold by Milner-Fenwick under the HealthClips brand. This content is delivered and tracked on the mobile health, cloudcomputing platform developed by Preventice. This combination gives health care professionals the ability to access and customize education from more than 435 three-minute video clips from a standard web browser for distribution on iPads, iPhones, laptops and desktop computers. This powerful combination allows healthcare providers to:

  • Deliver selected prescribed content to patients in-facility, in their homes or on the go
  • Provide consistent, coordinated care across providers
  • Allow patients to easily bookmark videos and insert notes for improved patient/provider collaboration
  • Enable continuous content improvement through real-time feedback on patient use
  • Assign a unique, yet de-identified code to each patient to track full or partial viewing
  • Export viewing history data back into health care systems to track against outcomes such as readmissions and quality improvement initiatives

The application can be purchased by calling (800) 432-8433 (x207) or visiting www.HealthClipsRx.com for more information and a demo. Health care providers can purchase HealthClips Rx for a variety of key diseases and medical conditions, including diabetes, heart failure, and pulmonology. In addition, there is extensive programming on wellness and prevention.

Benefits to patients
Unprecedented ease of use is a key element of HealthClips Rx. This is enhanced by a user interface that is consistent across a variety of devices, so patients can switch between watching a video on their phone, their mobile device, or their computer without interruption. According to Preventice, the company’s cloud platform recognizes the individual and syncs educational progress allowing users to:

  • Maintain a session across iPad, iPhone or home computer platforms without interruption while watching a single segment,
  • Bookmark content on any device,
  • Easily add notes to content to improve communications with care providers, and
  • Easily share educational information with family members and home care providers.

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