Predictive Capability, Interoperability, Ease of Integration, and Security

COVID has propelled healthcare technology. How do you know if you have the latest, best platform for your hospital or healthcare system? When you make the decision to implement Remote Patient Monitoring, how do you know that you are getting the product that can implement the latest technologies and scale with your growing needs?

As a healthcare technology executive, the two most frequent questions I hear in regard to RPM and virtual care platforms are:

• What is our ability to integrate with EHR’s?
• What is the platform’s interoperability?

While these are very important pieces of RPM, the technology goes well beyond this. Our m.Care software is truly a platform for the future of healthcare. The capabilities of the software, as well as the ability for it to help you improve care and reduce costs, is a game changer.

How can remote patient monitoring be the solution you need, and how does m.Care provide that technology solution?

Recently, I interviewed our Chief Technology Officer, Brent Kevern, and he explained in depth the predictive capability, interoperability, ease of integration, and security of the software.

Tech Q&A with the architect of the m.Care Platform:

Q: Can you give an overview about data and the m.Care platform?

Data is bidirectional. The m.Care platform was designed from the ground up to make it easy to import and export the data from the platform into an EMR.  At m.Care, we believe the data in our platform belongs to you and your patients, and so we have enabled a variety of methods to make it easy to get the data you need.

m.Care can extract data real time or in batches. Most clients prefer summary reports to feed their EHRs. This is often chosen to preclude at-home patient data from flooding EHRs.

Q: How can we use this data to improve patient care? For example, data to scale up. And can you talk about the HL7 data feed?

There’s a new way to provide premium healthcare. The power of m.Care is its proactive and predictive approach to providing care. m.Care incorporates historical patient data, while also learning from each patient’s activities, biometric data, and responses.

m.Care technology both monitors and identifies potential warning signs, and notifies both the patient and your care team when pre-identified parameters are met. This predictive technology allows for issues to be addressed before they become problems. Patients are empowered, able to enjoy life, and stay connected 24/7 to their care team.

That team is able to provide true healthcare – preemptive, instead of reactive.

Impressive, but you might ask how is this different from your EMR program, or how complicated the platform is to integrate?  The m.Care system can be integrated with your electronic medical records system, or it can be deployed as a stand alone solution, based on your facility’s requirements.

m.Care is the platform of choice for many major healthcare systems across the country. We integrate with all major EHR providers, including many Epic integrations.

Q: Can you explain in more depth the platform’s ability to integrate with Epic?

With regards to Epic, Many of our current customers use Epic as their EMR. Our team has extensive knowledge in integrating the platform with Epic including lab results, appointments, medication, ER visits and hospital stays. The m.Care platform captures all the data into clarity. Not only can we integrate Epics records into the platform, but we can push data directly to Epic.

The m.Care team typically works with the Epic IT support staff at the hospital to connect the two systems together. One of the first integration points we address is how we set up a patient inside of m.Care. The common mechanism is for a new order to be created inside of Epic that indicates a patient has been identified for care within m.Care. Once an order of that type is detected, the m.Care system is usually notified by way of an API call or in some cases by way of a file feed including all of the patients that should be enrolled.

Much of the data we would like to receive from Epic is historic in nature and tends to be found in the Epic Clarity warehouse. The m.Care system has a variety of pre-built import file formats that can accept the data from Clarity for import into m.Care. Data we commonly receive from Clarity includes appointments, lab results, admissions and prescription information. The file transfer is not the only mechanism though. The m.Care system includes a real time API that can be used to export data into m.Care in real time.

The exports of data is similar to the import mechanisms. There are real time APIs that can be used to extra data and connect to Epic or the m.Care system can export files for import into Epic.  Most customers prefer to take the files that are generated nightly from m.Care as their import source and then import the files back into Clarity. The files are specifically formatted to make them easy to import into Clarity.

Q: Can your platform integrate with a facility’s ICU equipment? 

Doctors frequently ask about whether m.Care can integrate with their ICU equipment. Does m.Care enable remote patient monitoring, and can the platform be adjusted to conform to their unique requirements? Some have open hardware technology, some hardware is closed.

Our answer is always “yes,” because m.Care was designed from the outset with inherent flexibility via the composition of applets. m.Care is also designed to integrate with virtually all major medical and bluetooth-enabled devices.

Q: How secure is the m.Care platform? 

m.Care is based on the very secure Microsoft Azure platform. m.Care passed its SOC 2 compliance audit in 2020, meaning it can collect, extract, record and deliver your data so you can proactively and safely manage your patients data, and provide optimum care.

Q: Can you explain what makes the platform proactive vs reactive?

There’s a new way to provide premium healthcare. The power of m.Care is its proactive and predictive approach to care delivery. m.Care is able to incorporate historical patient data, while also learning from each patient’s activities and responses.

m.Care technology both monitors and identifies potential warning signs and notifies both the patient and your care team. Issues are addressed before they become problems. Patients are empowered and able to enjoy life. Your care team is able to provide true healthcare – preemptive, instead of reactive.

Lastly, there is a real time push-notification mechanism built into m.Care. This mechanism can be used to notify a 3rd party system of key events occurring within the platform. The key events are pushed to the 3rd party system with information about the event and then the 3rd party system typically uses the m.Care API to extract any other data needed to assist in processing of the real time push notification event.

Please call us directly at 913.683.4015 to set up a demo of the m.Care platform technology and security.