Allscripts and MyCareTeam launched their integrated diabetes management system to healthcare providers at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society 12 Annual Conference.
Integrating the MyCareTeam application with Allscripts Enterprise EHR is enabling patients and providers to collaborate to better manage diabetes between visits and in the office.
UMass Memorial Health Care, the clinical partner of the University of Massachusetts Medical School, was the first hospital to use the integrated system, and a second implementation is now underway at University of South Florida (USF) Diabetes Centre in Tampa.
"To put it in perspective, if statistics hold true, more than 12,000 of the 35,000 attendees at HIMSS this year were pre-diabetic or had diabetes," said Glen Tullman, Allscripts Chief Executive Officer, who has served on the International Board of Directors of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF) since 2007.
"Nationally, diabetes affects 25.8 million people, an astonishing number. Managing a population of this size at the national level requires a truly connected community of health – one that both engages patients in self-management and uses remote health monitoring by a care team.
"At Allscripts, we are committed to an open technology platform that encourages innovative solutions, like this app from MyCareTeam, and drives better outcomes at a reduced cost."
Patients use MCT-Clinical for Diabetes, a software platform that is integrated with Allscripts Electronic Health Record, to regularly transmit their blood glucose readings directly from their glucose meters, along with blood pressure, weight, vital signs, caloric intake and exercise to a database via the Internet.
With the Allscripts integration, this data automatically connects to the Allscripts Enterprise EHR, and can create user-defined alerts that are routed to a diabetes educator, a care manager, a nurse, the patient's primary care physician or, if serious enough, an endocrinologist.
This process facilitates remote monitoring and coaching, increases user compliance with protocols, and most importantly, based on early results from UMASS and other studies, reduces hospitalisations.
"Caring for patients with chronic diseases is an ever-increasing burden to our healthcare system and a tremendous source of costs," said Jim Mingle, MyCareTeam's Chief Executive Officer.
"Integrating the MyCareTeam clinical app with Allscripts Electronic Health Record was easy to do given their open platform and is already enabling providers and patients to communicate more effectively between – and avoid unnecessary – office visits."
The integrated system also has the potential to assist patients in managing other chronic diseases such as weight management, blood pressure and in the future, asthma.