The Diabetes Telehealth Network, one of the new initiatives Gov. Phil Bryant unveiled in his State of the State address Wednesday, is a partnership of University of Mississippi of Medical Center, North Sunflower Medical Center, GE Healthcare, Intel-GE Care Innovations and CSpire. It’s designed to offer those with diabetes consistent and timely access to UMC clinicians via telehealth technology.
Patients in the 18-month program will have a tablet with mobile broadband access to record vital signs like blood sugar levels and send that information to UMC doctors, specialists, nurses and pharmacists. The results of those daily interactions will allow doctors to adjust treatment plans accordingly, said Dr. Kristi Henderson, UMC’s director of telehealth.
The program’s base will be Ruleville’s North Sunflower Medical Center, which has an existing telehealth partnership with the UMC. The program’s private partners will provide the technological infrastructure.
“This care can be scaled up to any region for any chronic disease,” Henderson said Thursday.
Bryant said the initiative resulted from a meeting more than a year ago at the Paris Air Show between state and GE officials.
GE operates jet engine and component assembly facilities in Batesville and Ellisville. Once its health care divisions were on board with the telehealth program, the state approached CSpire, Bryant said.
There are 372,000 people in the state diagnosed with diabetes, according to the Diabetes Foundation of Mississippi. More than 12 percent of adults in the Delta were diagnosed in 2010 with type 2 diabetes, often associated with obesity, according to UMC statistics. The American Diabetes Association, in a 2012 study, found Mississippians with the disease spent $2.7 billion on health care related to treating it.
“That was unfortunately the area where diabetes was most concentrated,” Bryant said of his native Sunflower County. “It’s a rural area. Lack of transportation is a big issue, and that affects access to care.”
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Clay Chandler
Quelle/Source: Clarion Ledger, 23.01.2014
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