One of Minnesota's largest providers of supportive housing for seniors will begin testing telemedicine and sensor technology to help frail seniors stay healthier and delay institutional care under an $8 million grant announced Wednesday.
It will be the largest project of its kind in the nation, involving about 1,600 clients in 40 rural cities, said David Horazdovsky, president of the Good Samaritan Society, based in Sioux Falls, S.D. Half the sites will be in Minnesota and the rest in North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa and Nebraska, he said.
The three-year grant came from a rural health initiative at the Leona and Harry B. Helmsley Trust in New York.
About half the clients will receive the new technology and half will be in a control group that gets traditional care in their homes or assisted-living facilities. Leslie Grant from the University of Minnesota will lead a research project to determine whether the technology keeps people healthier and reduces health care costs.
"That's what we expect," said Kelly Soyland, director of research and innovation at Good Samaritan. "We've used earlier versions of this equipment with about 40 clients before and we have lots of stories about catching illnesses earlier. But we need a big study to prove it."
In some homes, wireless sensors will detect a client's movements, monitor sleep quality and collect other information about day-to-day activities. The information will be sent over the Internet to a nurse, who will watch for unusual patterns, indications of potential problems. With telemedicine, clients can measure their blood pressure and other vital signs, with data sent electronically to a nurse or other health professional.
The nonprofit hopes that good data will convince the federal Medicare and Medicaid programs and private insurers to help finance future technology as a way to control health care costs.
Good Samaritan has about 35 nursing homes, 25 assisted-living facilities and seven home health agencies in Minnesota, with more housing in 23 other states.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Warren Wolfe
Quelle/Source: Minneapolis Star Tribune, 23.06.2010
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