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Medullan's June Newsletter With Featured Client: iGetBetter.com
06/17/2009 - Medullan is very excited to feature our work with iGetBetter.com - an innovative web based application to improve patient-centered episode management using standardized treatment plans. iGetBetter facilitates collaboration among patients and their care teams and empowers clinicians to create standard treatment plans that are customizable to every patient and episode. This close development partnership with iGetBetter.com is the type of working relationship Medullan seeks to establish with each of our clients. Our work began at the concept stage, defining and prioritizing business requirements. We used an agile methodology to design, architect, and implement the application and our collaboration continues into the go-to-market strategy.
- What is iGetBetter?
- What business problem does iGetBetter address?
- What are the benefits to patients, providers, and other stakeholders?
- What was your working relationship with Medullan like?
- What is your advice to other companies trying to develop an innovative application from scratch?
- How about other specialties or areas of healthcare?
- How does iGetBetter contribute to improving quality and managing costs in the healthcare system?
- How did you ensure that this application would be easy to use and adopt?
- How do you leverage mobile technologies?
- What has the feedback been so far from users?
- Who is behind iGetBetter.com?
iGetBetter.com is a Health 2.0 web application that allows physicians to create standardized treatment plans that can be assigned to patients electronically. The system is particularly helpful when managing episodes that require patients’ adherence to detailed and comprehensive care plans in an outpatient environment.
Our vision, with iGetBetter, is to lower the workload of physicians, to facilitate short and direct communication with patients and other care providers, to monitor the treatment progression and to increase patient compliance and consequently improve treatment outcomes.
What business problem does iGetBetter address?
iGetBetter was created based on the medical need of patients to keep all the post-surgery information and treatment plans clear and precise. We designed iGetBetter as a robust technology tool that doctors can use to address this need. Our goal was to develop a system that would contribute to the best possible outcome after surgery or a diagnosis that required continuing treatment in an outpatient environment.
When the patients leave the hospital or the doctor’s office the information that comes from various care team members, the surgeon, the physical therapists, their general practitioner, just to mention a few, can be very unclear. Although hospitals try to keep all the information clear and precise, most are in form of instructions on multiple pages of paper. When the patients are at home, there seems to be a breakdown. We understand that the patients forget approximately 50% of what they hear. Knowing that statistic, we focused our efforts to ensure that the instructions are clearer and timely with regards to their rehabilitation program.
What are the benefits to patients, providers, and other stakeholders?
Physicians: physicians can create standardized care plans according to their patients’ profiles, such as indication or procedure, age, etc. These plans can be individualized once assigned to a particular patient. The application automatically delivers step-by-step instructions to patients at the appropriate time. This would save a substantial amount of time for the physicians. Another benefit is that the physician can monitor patients’ compliance and the course of treatment in real-time. This allows the physician to receive and react to alerts and adjust instructions quickly. Physicians and other healthcare providers can utilize the application to gather data with the purpose of determining the efficacy of certain measures or of entire care plans.
Patients: these plans allow the patient to easily understand and follow extensive post-surgery instructions, answer questions and provide feedback online to the physician throughout the treatment. Other than the plans, features such as graphs provide an easy glance to patients’ course of treatment. Patients are able to invite their entire care team, including PCP’s, specialists, nurses, case managers, physical therapists, and others. It makes it easy for everyone to be linked and to communicate regardless of their institution or physical location. iGetBetter allows the entire care team to be informed about a patient’s course of treatment.
What was your working relationship with Medullan like?
Our relationship with Medullan has been excellent since the first time we met with them. We believe that we selected a great team to achieve our goal of launching our application in such a short period of time. There were many unknowns when we started our journey with them. We had to have a strong team synergy and collaboration to come to this point. Our partners at Medullan helped us along the way with their skills in joint problem solving, consensus decision making and shared leadership. They have impressed us with their exceptional analytical skills and project management experience that are vital to develop solutions like iGetBetter. They also bring a sense of humor and fun to the whole process, which we truly enjoy.
What is your advice to other companies trying to develop an innovative application from scratch?
We found it particularly important to have an outside consulting company that facilitated our workshops. It allowed us to be innovative while our ideas were balanced by our partner's technical expertise. I recommend they form a strong team composed of individuals with various expertise and backgrounds. In our case, my colleagues at iGetBetter combined with our partners at Medullan played a crucial role in designing iGetBetter.
How about other specialties or areas of healthcare?
We believe iGetBetter can be used in any medical field due to its flexible design that allows the physicians to define the treatment plans. Currently we are testing it in various surgery fields where treatment plans typically have a start and end date. However, the application can be used with patients not undergoing surgery or even in a preventative fashion. It is our hope to effectively and efficiently help the medical community to better manage short to mid-term episodes and possibly chronic medical situations.
How does iGetBetter contribute to improving quality and managing costs in the healthcare system?
Our vision is to lower the workload of physicians and their teams while increasing patient compliance and consequently treatment outcome. Access to the application will be free of charge for physicians throughout 2009 because our immediate goals are to measure the usefulness of the application and to show the value of this tool to physicians and patients. We would like to work in partnership with them to initiate pilot projects, measuring results in various medical fields.
The application will most possibly be free for all patients. We are confident that after the pilot phase physicians will sign up for a nominal monthly or annual fee so they may continue to assign care plans for their patients electronically. The potential benefits for better medical outcomes, improved communication and streamlined operations in the physician’s office are substantial relative to the cost of iGetBetter.
We also believe iGetBetter can be instrumental in reducing cost for insurance companies by decreasing the likelihood of never-events, complications, repeated procedures and other avoidable incidents. Hopefully we can all share the benefits of these savings in the near future.
How did you ensure that this application would be easy to use and adopt?
When we designed iGetBetter with the help of Medullan we envisioned an application, which would empower users (patients, providers, family and friends, public) defining the service, expanding it to other users and shaping the future on their own. We designed iGetBetter as a web based application with simplicity in mind.
Patients and health care providers can access the application from our public website www.igetbetter.com. Online, they can easily register to join and invite each other without the involvement from our company. Anyone can easily navigate through different features of the application. The application is designed to look and feel like many community based web applications.
How do you leverage mobile technologies?
We look forward to doing this in the near future. We would like to see certain functions of iGetBetter.com available on mobile devices to enhance availability and convenience for all user segments. Having fast and easy access to the application regardless of location will help to increase patient adherence to the treatment program and the retrieval of real-time feedback. Currently we are considering solutions to leverage mobile technologies. In the next few months we will be meeting with potential partners in this field to provide iGetBetter on mobile phones.
What has the feedback been so far from users?
We received very positive feedback from patients and physicians since we started presenting iGetBetter to the public a few weeks ago. The physicians focus on the benefits of providing clear and precise treatment plans, the decreased likelihood of mistakes, the prevention of complications, the conduction of comparative efficacy studies and the use of technology that can show data about outcome. Some physicians mentioned that they were very pleased to see that the system can monitor certain parameters automatically. Patients like the idea that they can be connected to their health care team during complicated treatments and appreciate the fact that help will be there when they needed it. So far, both patients and care providers have given very positive feedback regarding the ease of use of the application.
iGetBetter.com is a wholly-owned product of OPED, a leading orthopedic rehabilitation company known for its user-inspired products and services. OPED has over 200 employees worldwide, with headquarters in Switzerland, and offices in Germany, Australia, China and the US. Tapping into OPED's know-how of orthopedic treatments, they know what it takes to give patients mobility and peace of mind.