Medicine, Innovation and Entrepreneurship convention spotlights many promising developments.
Back in April, the Medicine, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship Conference featured lectures, education and networking specifically for physician innovators. Two of the featured speakers, Dr. Joseph Habboushe and Dr. Leah Houston, are emergency physicians.
They are focused on medical education and increasing physician autonomy. Other speakers included a team of ophthalmologists who are simplifying the process of contacting on-call specialists, an allergist focused on improving care for asthmatics, and a glaucoma surgeon focused on online vision assessments.
Here’s a look at some of their upcoming innovations:
MDCalc.com: Providing CME and Evidence-Based Decision Tools
Dr. Joseph Habboushe, Associate Professor at NYU/Bellevue and Cofounder/CEO of MDCalc, focuses on bringing evidence-based tools to doctors. MDCalc features over 500 clinical decision tools and is used on a weekly basis by 65% of all US physicians — making it the most broadly used physician reference in medicine. MDCalc will soon be integrated into Electronic Health Records (EHR) and simultaneously offer Continuing Medical Education (CME).
They are currently partnering with three pilot hospitals, with a focus on auto-populated inputs and recordable results. CME will be made available in three different ways: by using the EHR in the pilot programs, through purchase, and via credit exchanged for contributing to MDCalc. They are also rolling out new filters, decision aid tools, and featuring guideline summaries from ACEP and other medical specialties. To learn more about MDCalc’s work with EHRs and CME, go to http://ehr.mdcalc.com/ and http://cme.mdcalc.com/
ConnectOnCall — Simplifying After-Hours Specialty Call
Drs. David Rhee, Brett Rosenblatt and Vincent Deramo, partners with Long Island Vitreoretinal Consultants, built ConnectOnCall to simplify the process of contacting the on-call specialist. Rather than searching through outdated call schedules, referencing Google, hoping you paged the right number, and relying on an answering service to function properly, ConnectOnCall has created a simpler way.
You can use their web form to select the specialty service you need, type in the patient’s name and concern in their HIPAA-compliant platform, and ConnectOnCall will contact the physician and document both your call time and the specialist’s response time in your EHR. This is all done without requiring the time and distraction from other patients needed to search for a phone number, speak with an operator, explain our role or navigate a telephone tree. To learn more, check out their website at ConnectOnCall.com.
ASTHMAXcel: Evidence-Based Apps for Decreased Asthma Symptoms
Dr. Sunit Jariwala is the director of Clinical and Research Innovation at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and Montefiore Medical Center in New York City. He worked with a multidisciplinary team of physician-researchers, behavioral scientists, health information technology experts and statisticians to build ASTHMAXcel. Their innovation is a mobile health app that adult and pediatric asthma patients use for both education and personalized adherence support.
While other asthma apps lack validation and sustained use, ASTHMAXcel personalizes content and incorporates behavioral science to promote long-term use of the app. App users have increased asthma control in two months and significant reductions in hospital admissions (by 83%), ED visits (by 63%), and steroid courses (by 50%) by four months. To learn more about ASTHMAXcel, their iOS and Android apps, and to see a demo, go to http://www.asthmaxcel.net/.
Humanitarian Physicians Empowerment Community (HPEC): Increasing Physician Autonomy
Dr. Leah Houston is an emergency physician and the founder of Humanitarian Physicians Empowerment Community (HPEC). HPEC aims to increase physician autonomy and independence through a novel approach to the management of physician identity and credentials. Under the current system, a hospital validates a physician’s identify, education, board certification and licenses. They become the source of information about that physician for interested parties, like patients and insurers.
HPEC has created a platform for physicians to create and validate our own professional data, and we become the source of our own professional identity as we interact with hospitals, patients and insurance companies. This process of creating a self-sovereign identity is enabled through blockchain.
The goal is to disconnect physicians from third-party systems that don’t benefit either physicians or patients. HPEC’s platform provides physicians with sovereign ownership of their professional brand in a digital space so that they can determine the rules of engagement with health systems and insurance carriers.
Currently, as health systems merge, consolidate and employ physicians, they also influence the referral patterns and appointment availability for patients. HPEC’s platform will improve choice for patients by improving access, mobility and autonomy to both independent and employed physicians. This will also decrease administrative waste, theft of services and third-party interference in the practice of medicine. To learn more about HPEC, check out their website at https://hpec.io/.
Simple Contacts: Providing Online Vision Assessment
Dr. Saya Nagori, a glaucoma surgeon, and Innovation and Entrepreneurship Conference Chair, created Simple Contacts so that patients can accurately confirm their vision and submit their own exams to an ophthalmologist to renew their contact lens prescription. Because 80% of patients will need the same prescription in a subsequent year, and because eye exams with dilation and refraction are only required every four years, patients can use Simple Contacts to complete an online exam and submit it for an ophthalmologist’s review.
Currently, the patented technology is available only for asymptomatic patients, without any history of medical or eye problems, who need to renew their current contact lens prescription. Learn more about Simple Contacts at https://www.simplecontacts.com/
The 2020 Medicine, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship Conference will be held in Washington DC. You can learn more about the conference at https://www.medicineandtech.com.
