Senate Panel Previews Electronic Health Technology
The effort, loosely called e-Health or e-Care, combines health-care technology with 21st-century Internet connectivity. It will allow doctors to interact with their patients through innovations such as video chats, telephone health checkups, and home-health monitoring devices that relay data over wireless Internet connections.
“The development of the broadband network and health information technologies has the potential to truly transform health care and simultaneously enable better outcomes and lowering costs,” said Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine).
One of the new health technologies on display last Thursday was an automatic drug dispenser that can monitor and adjust medication dosages wirelessly, allowing doctors to tailor dosages of drugs such as insulin without having to schedule in-person visits with patients.
“What we’re talking about, folks, is using a device like this one,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said, as he displayed the small device. “It attaches to the patient’s skin and is loaded with drugs that are administered in the exact way that the doctor prescribes – wirelessly.
“That means that a doctor can vary the doses based on the information the doctor is receiving [from the monitor]. The patient doesn’t have to go in to the doctor and then the pharmacy to change his or her prescription,” he said.
The data recorded by such devices would be automatically uploaded to a patient’s electronic health record, which could then be reviewed by a doctor from a computer or smart phone, allowing the doctor to monitor a sick patient in almost real time...
