Print“The VA’s goal is to use telehealth capabilities to 'ensure veteran patients get the right care in the right place at the right time and aims to make the home into the preferred place of care, whenever possible.'”
Betting on telehealth as a way to improve access to care for America’s 22 million veterans, the Department of Veterans Affairs has awarded contracts totaling almost $1.4 billion to six information technology companies to run its growing program, already one of the largest in the world. Telehealth systems allow patients remote access to healthcare professionals from their homes or rural clinics.
Individual contracts run from $150 million to $372 million over five years, starting with a one-year base period, and four optional one-year renewal periods.
Although the VA did not release a statement about the awards, Authentidate, American Telecare, Cardiocom, HealthHero network, Visual Telecommunication Network/ViTelCare, and Viterion TeleHealthcare received contracts, according to Fierce Mobile Healthcare.
New Jersey-based Authentidate and Minneapolis-based Cardiocom will supply the VA with web-based systems to monitor patients and manage the in-home care of patients. These systems will be used by clinicians to remotely monitor their patients’ vital signs and gather other pertinent information about their patients' health to supplement in-person visits. They can also remotely manage or adjust their patients care plans, medication reminders and related information, and provide disease-specific education to their patients in real-time.
The VA’s goal is to use telehealth capabilities to “ensure veteran patients get the right care in the right place at the right time and aims to make the home into the preferred place of care, whenever possible,” according to its website.
Services include traditional clinical video telehealth that connects rural clinics to doctors and specialty services available only at medical centers; remote patient monitoring with digital devices that patients and physicians can use to monitor their vital signs; traditional; and technologies that can acquire and store clinical information, such as data, image, sound, and video, that is then retrieved at another site for evaluation.
April 21, 2011
http://www.burrillreport.com/article-va_awards_1_4_billion_in_telehealth_contracts.html
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