Customer empowerment, patient-physician relationship, and sociotechnical issues

1:30-3:00pm MaRS CR2, Medicine 2.0 Congress, Toronto (Sept17, 2009)


"Enabling Semantic Health Apps: The MEDgle Clinical Decision Support System API"


Presenters: Aditya Damle (CEO MEDgle Inc., Sunnyvale US), Francisco Jose Grageles Iii (Medical Informatician, MEDgle Inc., Sunnyvale US)

This presentation was all about ‘clinical decision support’ (CDS) systems and its application programming interface (API). Aditya Damle demonstrated the vision of providing comprehensive healthcare as a team whereby each professional in the spell is empowered. He termed this concept as the ‘rocket-science’ in healthcare. Damle mentioned about the overwhelming complexities associated with healthcare. The application (CDS2.0) he presented was a working demo and was appreciated because of its integrated platforms.
With regards to the semantics of health, we need to ask the question “How does the relationships connect and transform the entire patient and caregiver experience?”
CDS2.0 has been live on the web for 2 years, it is multilingual and has gone through a number of iterations. It seems to be the company’s own API which allows others to take advantage of the features. Although this area sounded a bit bizarre, the company probably has in mind the integration of systems.
It allows people to start developing applications and has a huge affect with the idea of helping people to understand their options, to empower them to make rational choices. The speaker highlighted some of the themes to be considered, which provides a sense of direction towards which its innovations are geared-
- Understand the transformation of discrete to continuous
- Understand the micro to the macro
- Empower not just the patients but also nurses, physicians
Apparently PHRs, EHRs are licensing this company’s products to transform their API.
The overall aim of such applications is to provide differential diagnosis, diagnostic suggestions, treatment options, personalized analytics, integration via CPT/ICD9-10PHR secure, stateless. In some ways the entire concept is also about the semantic web.
Interesting example demonstrated on how age dramatically changes the analysis of chest pain. It shifts the potential types of results and what logical choices one should be thinking about. Physicians may think of 4 out of the 5 likely causes, so having a system enables them to view all possible options.
Also, it enables the patient to simply to understand where he is in the health spectrum so that they can start taking actions accordingly. Additionally, it also has the age forecast fit score. Seeing the knowledge base of this application was quite fascinating.
Finally another component of the system was ‘enurseKim’, which is yet another interactive application via which patients/caregivers have the chance to chat with a virtual nurse and obtain advice and information electronically.
The speaker also discussed “Healthybyte”, part of their API which works like a Twitter for MEDgle. The company basically adopted the social networking model and created a portal with assorted views to deal with various complexities in the era of personalized medicine.