Healthium Platform
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The Need
Today, approximately 125 million Americans have a chronic medical condition including heart disease, cancer, AIDS, respiratory illness, and diabetes among others. The number of Americans with chronic conditions is expected to grow to reach 157 million or half the population by 2020.
Telehealth Broadband LLC conducted research with sets of senior care recipients (over age 65) and family caregivers in San Diego and Dallas-Fort Worth. The interactive television interface was the highest ranked feature because of the convenience and intuitive interaction. The ability for patients to video visit with their health care providers ranked 3rd.
An email survey was sent out to 38,931 high speed Internet users to determine overall interest in Healthium service and to develop and in-depth understand of consumers needs and requirements. The survey produced a 12% response rate with 4,863 responses. 84% of respondents felt Healthium was easy to use while 94% of likely subscribers felt Healthium was easy to use. 59% of respondents who had an interest in Healthium (N=2,122) were most or very interested in (scale 3.6/5.0) conducting video visits with their physician. Despite the survey being done with relatively sophisticated high-speed Internet PC users, less than 50% preferred to use the PC for the Healthium service interface.
The results of these studies indicate to us that the employment of a television user interface for the delivery of telemedicine services has a high probability of allowing penetration of patient demographic groups heretofore difficult to reach using PC-based and other “high-tech” approaches. The populations most likely to have high representation in public medicine chronic disease treatment programs are also those most likely to respond to using a means of interaction with which they are already most comfortable – their television.
Healthium provides the healthcare manager with full control over the content and patient interactions through a web browser. Healthcare providers can use the rich set of Healthium tools to automate a significant part of the patient interaction but always have the "face-to-face" option of the two-way video. The end result is a high-quality patient and provider interaction that is operationally very efficient.
Despite the fact that there is a high penetration of PCs and Internet access in the US, there is still significant off-line population in certain demographics as illustrated by the following table (September 2001 Dept. of Commerce report):
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Non-Internet
Users
(1,000’s) |
Total
Individuals
(1,000’s) |
Non-Internet
Use
(percent of group) |
| Total Population |
146,140 |
262,620 |
46.1 |
| Race |
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Black
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20,068 |
33,305 |
60.2 |
Hispanic
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22,005 |
32,146 |
68.4 |
| Family Income |
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Less than $15k
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23,506 |
31,354 |
75.0 |
$15k - $25k
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17,756 |
26,649 |
66.6 |
| Education Attainment |
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Less than High School
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23,977 |
27,484 |
87.2 |
High School Diploma
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34,539 |
57,386 |
60.2 |
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Healthium increases the accessibility to minority, lower income and elderly households that are currently off-line while still utilizing effective Internet techniques. Interactive television can fill a crucial gap for health care delivery to patients at home.
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