We’ve written extensively about telemedicine. We’ve covered applications as diverse as using drones to deliver telemedicine capabilities to disaster locations and telemedicine for ships’ crew at sea. We covered a report on telemedicine’s effectiveness in reducing hospital admissions and the results of a study that showed telemedicine to be just as effective at treating headaches as office consultations.
Avella Specialty Pharmacy recently launched a telemedicine patient support program called NurseConnect to help individuals using specialty drugs. The concept behind NurseConnect is to use innovative technology for high-touch outreach for patients with conditions such as hepatitis C, cancer, HIV, or infertility. NurseConnect assigns nurses with drug and health condition-specific support materials. Nurses can make a connection patients immediately following diagnosis even before the patient starts taking the medication to assist with questions or concerns ahead of time and to be the patient’s single point of contact during treatment. Depending on what’s needed at the time, a nurse can use a variety of support modalities including instructional videos, phone calls, video chats, screen sharing, or text to provide timely information and help.
On the provider and pharmaceuticals company sides, NurseConnect uses surveys, recording, and call monitoring to collect data on patient experience, compliance, and medication side effects. With NurseConnect, Avella also can assist health care providers and drug companies with patient success and marketing data. By using multiple technologies to respond to patient needs and varying tech access, NurseConnect can provide personalized assistance to patients at home in a timely manner without requiring an office or hospital visit. This is just one more example of how telehealth can help save time and money while delivering better outcomes for patients.
