The Caregiving Groups app and its accompanying and integrated web portal applies many of the same concepts to healing patient populations that great sports teams, companies, and other organizations use to drive performance and positive outcomes. Central to our approach is surrounding patients with the people, tools, processes and knowledge they need to flourish.
Accordingly, the Caregiving Groups app advances patient care by empowering them and their teams with capabilities like personalized drug lists, centralized calendars, event reminders, photo sharing, issue tracking, and therapist reviews.
The health care industry in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world faces an array of new challenges. In some cases these difficulties are of a magnitude never seen before. The aging of America alone will stress systems and resources in the U.S. for decades to come.
But all is not gloom and doom. Innovative organizations and individuals are finding new tools, methods and participants in the battle to make healthcare work better for everyone. The AARP in its report "Valuing the Invaluable: The Growing Contributions and Costs of Family Caregiving, 2011 Update" states this clearly in pointing out that family caregivers alone provide the equivalent of $450 billion worth of care per year to adult parents. This makes caregivers one of the largest and most overlooked pillars of the U.S. health care system. And these same caregivers, if properly engaged and mobilized, provide a resource pool for patient populations beyond just the aged.
By bringing together the right people, with the right information, and the right regimen, individuals and the teams behind them stay on plan and experience fewer dropped balls. And when problems do arise remedies can be more quickly and readily applied.
App capabilities include:
• Drug List: This maintains a common record so confusion and errors are minimized
• Drug Information: 24/7 mobile access to information on 53,000 National Institutes of Health approved drugs
• Access Control: Patients (or their agents) completely control who’s involved
• Calendars: Central calendars provide visibility to better coordinate efforts
• Reminders: Alerts tied to the calendar make life easier in the form of reminders
• Photos: Share photos of clinical and therapy related images for your group
• Videos: 24/7 mobile & web access to selected videos pertinent to individual patient regimens
• Check-In: “Check-ins” document what’s happened
• Issue Tracking: Issues can be documented and assigned so fewer balls get dropped
• Sensors: Allows a patient to share step information from several step trackers including Apple Watch, Apple Health and Fitbit
• Personal Information: Data is easily added and updated so teams remain informed