AAMI's home health tech report details challenges, recommendations
A new report details the complex challenges associated with the use of healthcare technology in homes and other nonclinical settings and offers suggestions on how to best address those challenges.
A Vision for Anywhere, Everywhere Healthcare, from the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation (AAMI), lists five "clarion themes" made by presenters and attendees during the AAMI/FDA Summit on Healthcare Technology in Nonclinical Settings in October. The themes include the following:
- Deepen all stakeholders’ understanding of use environments—and their remarkable variability.
- Coordinate multiple and recurring transitions in care to improve patient safety.
- Adopt a systems approach—encompassing people, workflows, therapies, technology, and payment—to redesign the full spectrum of healthcare in nonclinical settings.
- Standardize and simplify.
- Design with empathy.
The report also includes advice from experts, profiles of various stakeholders and personal accounts from those who have experienced the benefits—and frustrations—of using healthcare technology in the home. Many summit speakers called for better understanding of the needs and limitations of end users.
Providers are prescribing more and more medical equipment with varying degrees of complexity. In the home setting, designers have more factors to consider including training, and insurers face reimbursement challenges.
“Manufacturers can design and produce perfect ‘home-ready’ devices with the very best, intuitive instructions for use, and patients and their caregivers at home will still be at risk when using these devices if the rest of the system of care is not ready,” wrote AAMI President Mary Logan and FDA Senior Policy Advisor Mary Weick-Brady, with the Center for Devices and Radiologic Health, in a letter within the report.
Editor
Editor Beth earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism and master’s in health communication. She has worked in hospital, academic and publishing settings over the past 20 years. Beth joined TriMed in 2005, as editor of CMIO and Clinical Innovation + Technology. When not covering all things related to health IT, she spends time with her husband and three children.