Lumeon Offers a Step Toward Usable Device Data in Health Care

The health care field floats on oceans of patient data, but like the real oceans on our planet, patient data is polluted. Trying to ground evidence-based medicine on billing data is an exercise in frustration. Clinical data is hard to get access to, and has its own limitations. For instance, it is collected only when a patient visits the clinic or hospital. The FDA recently put 100 million dollars in its budget to get patient data from electronic health records (which the commissioner called “real-world experience”).

One of the paths toward better data for research and treatment lies in the data from medical devices: it’s plentiful, detailed, and accurate. But device data has mountains to climb before researchers and clinicians can use it: getting this data in the first place, normalizing and standardizing it, and integrating it with the systems used for analysis and treatment. That’s what excites me about a recent new direction taken by Lumeon, a platform for workflow management and treatment coordination in health care.

I covered Lumeon’s platform a few months ago. The company already lays out an enticing display of tools for clinicians, along with EHR integration. What’s new is the addition of medical devices, an enhancement that required nine months of working with medical device manufacturers. Recently I had another chance to talk to Rick Halton, Vice President of Marketing and Product for Lumeon.

Along with the measurements provided by devices, Lumeon has tools for patient engagement and the measurement of outcomes. These outcomes go beyond simple quantitative scores such as limb rotation. Lumeon creates for each patient a patient-specific functional score (PSFS). For one patient, it may be whether he can play outside with his kids. For another, it’s whether she can they go back to work, and for another, how far she can walk.

Lumeon asks, how can a device be used in a patient journey? It uses the routine information to help provide consistent care throughout this journey pathway, and measures outcomes throughout to generate feedback that promotes better long-term outcomes.

Device data is currently stored in a Lumeon platform that may be on the clinician’s site or in the cloud. Using an API, Lumeon’s output can be embedded within an EHR (they currently do this with Epic) so that the output can be displayed as part of the EHR display, and the clinician doesn’t even have to know that the results are being generated outside the EHR. In the future, the data may be integrated directly into the EHR. However, Lumeon’s direct customers are the providers, not the EHR vendors.

Data from devices was popular among providers at first for discharge planning and other narrow applications. Lumeon’s device integration is now getting more attention from providers who are experiencing a squeeze on reimbursements, a growing alertness among payers for outcomes, and a slow move in the industry toward fee-for-value. One leading device manufacturer is already using Lumeon for better treatment of cardiovascular care, bariatric surgery, and diabetes. Other applications include chronic disease, perioperative care (readiness for the OR and enhanced recovery), the digital patient experience on the web or in an app, and the patient centered medical home.

If Lumeon can turn device data into better treatment, other clinical institutions and health care platforms should be able to do so as well. It’s time for health care to enter the 21st century and use the Internet of Things (or Internet of Healthy Things, as termed by Dr. Joseph Kvedar) for the benefit of patients.

About the author

Andy Oram

Andy is a writer and editor in the computer field. His editorial projects have ranged from a legal guide covering intellectual property to a graphic novel about teenage hackers. A correspondent for Healthcare IT Today, Andy also writes often on policy issues related to the Internet and on trends affecting technical innovation and its effects on society. Print publications where his work has appeared include The Economist, Communications of the ACM, Copyright World, the Journal of Information Technology & Politics, Vanguardia Dossier, and Internet Law and Business. Conferences where he has presented talks include O'Reilly's Open Source Convention, FISL (Brazil), FOSDEM (Brussels), DebConf, and LibrePlanet. Andy participates in the Association for Computing Machinery's policy organization, named USTPC, and is on the editorial board of the Linux Professional Institute.

   

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