I read Mark Hurst’s Good Experience newsletter every time it comes, because it always has good and funny information. But the thing I look forward to most each year is his gift guide and almanac. Well thought-out and full of interesting information. Check it out.

Seen while installing the Google Toolbar for Google Notebooks. This was a clever way to get my attention, and it worked.

Most people don’t particularly enjoy staying in the hospital. If you’ve ever had the misfortune of spending some time in the hospital, you’re experience of departing likely left much to be desired. For folks with complicated conditions like heart disease, diabetes, etc., the instructions they receive on diet, new drug regimens, things to do and not do, things to watch out for, whom to call when there is a problem, etc. can be downright overwhelming. Perhaps this is the reason that “nearly 18% of Medicare patients admitted to a hospital are readmitted with 30 days of discharge, accounting for $15 billion in spending”, according to a fascinating article in the Wall Street Journal (Landro, Laura. “Keeping Patients From Landing Back in Hospital.” Wall Street Journal 12 12 2007: D1). Not only does inadequate follow-up care cost the healthcare system a great deal of money, but it degrades the quality of life when patients return home:

“We have to start paying attention to people’s needs beyond the hospital door,” says Mary Naylor, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Nursing. She has conducted a number of clinical trials on a model to help older adults with complex care needs after they are discharged. “The experience of multiple hospitalizations can take a devastating toll on the human psyche and the quality of life for patients and their caregivers,” she says.

Fortunately, many folks have some great ideas about how follow-up care can be improved:

There are about five million readmissions a year in U.S. hospitals, with approximately a third occurring within 90 days of discharge, according to the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, a Boston-based nonprofit. But with so-called transitional-care programs, which follow patients for varying periods of time at home, as many as 46% of readmissions could be prevented, says Pat Rutherford, an IHI vice president.

The institute is working with hospitals to reduce readmissions. Its programs include: identifying patients at risk for return, scheduling follow-up doctor’s appointments before patients are discharged, sending nurses to patients’ homes within a few days of discharge, monitoring patients at home, and educating patients and families on how to adhere to medication schedules and self-care regimens

(emphasis added).

For our sister company Gazoont is building a platform that can be used to accomplish much of what IHI’s programs seek to do. In particular, the Gazoont platform can be used to increase patient awareness by providing them packages of information tuned to a particular patient’s needs, as well as allowing hospitals, managed-care groups, etc. to mount patient wellness campaigns that target patients that match a particular set of criteria.

Some hospitals, like St. Luke’s in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, are participating with IHI in a pilot to implement some of its programs. The results for their patients are compelling:

David Dunn, a 69-year-old retired golf-course manager suffering from congestive heart failure, diabetes and kidney disease, was admitted to St. Luke’s earlier this year to have three stents placed in blocked arteries; with a history of repeated hospitalizations, he was signed up for the home transition program, which included follow-up visits by home-care nurses and special instructions to help his family monitor his condition.

“The care was so much better than anything we’d experienced,” says his daughter, Deb Kacena, who recalls other hospital stays marked by poor communication with doctors and little follow-up care. “It was really crucial, because there were so many things going on with him”

(emphasis mine).

As these pilot programs give way to larger rollouts, it is easy to imagine how the Gazoont platform (as well as other tools such as the devices for wellness monitoring like those offered by Halo) can accelerate the effort to save money for the healthcare system by introducing new efficiencies, and, most importantly, improve the quality of care for patients.

One of the things we espouse here at PointClear is achieving a balance between work and life. We have an office but we can work from home whenever we want to or need to. We don’t have strict hours. The company supports our outside endeavors such as my cycling team, other employees’ kids softball and volleyball teams, and the famous Walker Street Opry bluegrass band.

A recent study by the Wake Forest University School of Medicine reports that setups like this result in healthier workers:

A flexible work life, including telecommuting and job shares, is good for your health, researchers said on Tuesday.

They found that if people have the ability to work from home and to compress work weeks, they are more likely to make healthier lifestyle choices, to exercise more and to sleep better.

“Perhaps it gives people the time to fit in healthier lifestyle into their everyday regimen or maybe it just enables people to better manage their time,” Professor Joseph G. Grzywacz, of Wake Forest University School of Medicine, said in an interview.

Another thing the article cited is that, while work/life balance initiatives are often started to help women balance work and family, they tend to benefit both men and women. We see this kind of phenomenon all the time. A classic example is curb cuts for the disabled who are in wheelchairs. These curb cuts benefit wheelchair users, true. But they also benefit people pushing strollers, pulling luggage, those who have bad knees, etc.

Perhaps the far-reaching benefits of this kind of work environment will urge more companies to implement policies that help their employees strike a balance and lead healthier lives.

Read the whole article about flexible work life at Yahoo!

Last week I visited my friend Dr. Brian Toone’s Computer Science class at Samford University to talk to them about incorporating usability into their online mapping web site. They have a neat idea for letting users create maps using the Google map interface, and then order the maps printed on high-quality archival, waterproof paper. A great resource for people who are hiking, camping, cycling, etc. and want a custom map of their route or the area they plan to cover.

I was really impressed by what the students had already done. It’s interesting to look at designs created by people who have grown up with the Internet in their homes and schools. Their design was very sophistocated in terms of using tabs, a clean “Web 2.0″ type interface, and integration of a third party app, like Google maps, through an API. You could tell that they totally missed the “late 90’s aethestic” of Times New Roman plain blue links! It’s a good thing. :)

We worked through the 10 Usability Heuristics as a starting point to addressing the broad topic of usability on their site. We talked about how to use the home page as a launching point to set the user’s expectations of what they could do with the site and what they could buy, and how to streamline both the map creation and ordering processes.

One thing we discussed was using ajax functionality to combine the interactions of two pages into one. They were familiar with what ajax could do, so I suggested that they create some paper mock-ups to validate the idea and determine the best way to design the interaction.

Their next step is to make some modifications, and then run some simple usability tests to see how well users can create maps and make purchases using the site. I hope to go back and help them with this next semester!

As the only child of a parent who is ‘older than 50 but less than 100′ (Mom, I hope this is vague enough), I have a particular interest in my role as caregiver in the use of technology to help me help my Mom more efficiently, while maintaining her privacy and independence. There is a burgeoning market of hardware and software (the latter of which is of particular interest to us at PointClear) that helps caregivers monitor various tasks and events–from whether or not certain medications are taken at the appropriate intervals to whether someone needs assistance because of a fall in the home. More importantly, it gives folks who are living independently a sense of security that help is always available–even if they aren’t able call for it. The obvious issue to overcome is concern about loss of privacy. Apparently, the trade-off is worth it for many seniors, according to this recent article in the Wall Street Journal:

When John Fowlkes’s adult daughter suggested installing an electronic monitoring system in his apartment to oversee his well-being from afar, “I was very skeptical,” he says. To Mr. Fowlkes, 86, who has an active social life including an 80-year-old girlfriend, the idea evoked thoughts of Big Brother.

Work and Family columnist Sue Shellenbarger learns about new home-monitoring technologies that may allow doctors and families to track the medical condition of seniors from afar.
Mindful that a younger friend had fallen at home and lain on the floor for hours before anyone came to help, Mr. Fowlkes, of Raleigh, N.C., gave in. To his surprise, he found the setup “makes you feel more secure.”

source: Wall Street Journal, November 29, 2007; Page D1
Link to article (may require log-in)

Here is a video that compliments the article:

On this topic, we are all very excited about Halo Monitoring, Inc., a company in Huntsville, AL, and a finalist in the Alabama Launchpad competition. Halo has some very exciting products that they will bring to market in the near future in this space. You can listen to a very interesting conversation between Halo’s CEO, Chris Otto, and ClearCast’s host David Karabinos in our Podcast series here.

David Karabinos, the host of ClearCast, has done an amazing job with a new series interviewing the winners of the 2007 Alabama Launchpad. This has gotten some well-deserved attention recently:

• Huntsville Times Article
• Birmingham Business Journal Article
• Alabama Launchpad Blog
• ClearCast Press Release