RightCare Solutions announced the launch of RightCare Touch, an app designed to make it easier to stay in touch with patients after discharge, ensure they’re recovering properly with their personalized care plan, and prevent unnecessary post-acute care services and re-admissions.
The app is available now for Apple iOS devices and Google Android devices, and can be used at the time of discharge or after discharge.
This allows clinicians, outpatient nurses, or case managers to create a customized, patient-specific checklist of four to five questions about medication taken, drowsiness and sleep quality, daily weight, and more.
“We already had a working Android app in use. As Google doesn’t restrict the Android OS app installs, the Android app could be installed directly from our servers,” Mrinal Bhasker, RightCare’s chief technology officer, told eWEEK. “We are excited about the iOS app launch as, along with the Android app, now we can support a large percentage of the mobile user base.”
Bhasker said RightCare holds sacred the security and privacy of patients, which was of utmost importance in the design and development of this system.
“When developing a mobile app, we needed to make sure that no protected health information (PHI) was compromised. The Touch app doesn’t store any PHI on the device,” Bhasker said. “All the data entered by the patients is directly sent to our secure servers over an encrypted connection. This data is then only shared with credentialed healthcare providers that are caring for the patient, or monitoring their health, with patient consent.”
Answered by phone, text message, computer, or video, these questions help guide efforts to monitor the patient’s progress, and the app gathers the patient’s daily answers into heat maps that alert the hospital to potential problems at a glance.
If a patient does not have a smartphone, the same customized checklist questions will be delivered through interactive voice response (IVR) to the patient’s home phone or cell phone through the app’s automated texts or calls.
In some cases, wireless or wearable medical devices, such as a blood pressure cuff or WiFi-connected scale can feed directly into the app.
Based on software developed by AirCare Labs, a DreamIt Ventures company that RightCare acquired earlier this year, Touch helps hospitals, payers, accountable care organizations (ACOs), and post-acute care providers engage patients through daily contact.
Using that feedback, hospitals and ACOs can identify patients considering a trip to the emergency department (ED), uncover patients who don’t know they’re failing at-home treatments, and alert clinicians to engage the patient and avoid unnecessary ED visits and re-admissions.