Mainstreaming eHealth

Advancing Chronic Care with eHealth
Technologies in Japan: Proving Global
Solutions for an Aging Population
Steve Brown
CEO
Health Hero Network Ltd
Mainstreaming eHealth

The Aging Population
Challenge in Japan
• Total population drops from
120M (2000) to 100M (2050)
• Population over 65 rises from
18% (2000) to 37% (2050)
• Traditional familial care of
elderly declining rapidly
•
• New solutions needed for
chronic care
Mainstreaming eHealth

What can eHealth do?
• Tools to support and educate patients to improve self-
care, wellness, and health behavior
• Tools to support caregivers in the monitoring and
management of patients with chronic disease
• Value to patients, caregivers, and society:
Prevent the worsening of chronic disease
Increase access to chronic care
Lower the burden and cost of chronic care
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Tools to support and educate
patients
• Easy-to-use interactive
countertop device
• Daily personalized
dialogue and guidance
• Communication hub for
home medical devices
Behavior modification
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Personalized daily guidance
and feedback
• Congestive Heart Failure
• Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease
• Coronary Artery Disease
• Diabetes
• Hypertension
• Asthma
• Depression
• Senior Wellness (diet, activity, medications)
Development tools and platform approach
enables adaptation to local needs
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Fully customizable dialogue content
• Example from Dutch COPD program operated by Sananet BV in Netherlands
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Communication hub for home
medical devices
* Subject to appropriate regulatory approvals
Open system can serve devices from many different vendors
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Tools to support caregivers
• Web-based application
services for caregivers
• Daily patient status and
needs stratification
• Symptoms, behavior,
knowledge
Monitor everyone but
manage by exception
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Systems approach
Enabling an improved model of chronic care
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Yamatake Corporation – Pioneer of
chronic care improvement in Japan
• Over 90 years experience in innovating in process automation and
factory automation
• Develops new business in the fields of health care, energy
conservation and food safety and agriculture
• 7,100 employees, over 1.4 billion (USD) in sales – 2003
• Created the Safety Service Centre which runs a personal
emergency response service
• Developed chronic care improvement system and service based on
Health Buddy® system in partnership with Health Hero Network
• Chronic care improvement services through Safety Service Centre
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Obstacles to improving
chronic care in Japan
• Insufficient economic incentives for healthcare
providers to focus on prevention
• Entrenched healthcare interests and institutions are
slow to change
• Population health factors are moving in the wrong
direction (obesity, diabetes, lung disease all rising)
Does this sound familiar?
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Situation in Japan is model for global
needs to improve chronic care for aging population
• Very different healthcare systems in Japan,
Europe, USA
• Very similar needs to improve chronic care for
aging populations
Leading toward similar eHealth solutions
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Video example is from Health Buddy® program
in Netherlands operated by Sananet BV
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Similar chronic care improvement
programsand pilots underway in 2005
• Japan (Yamatake)
• Netherlands (Health Ministry, hospital pilots with Sananet)
• USA (Veterans Affairs national program, Medicare pilots)
Opportunity to learn from examples around the world
New body of evidence being generated to support systems
approach to improving chronic care for aging patients
Based on eHealth enabling tools
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Future developments will further increase
capabilities applications globally
Health Buddy® 2
Processor: Samsung ARM 2410
Memory: 64MB
Persistent Storage: 32 MB
Operating System: Linux
Screen: 640 x 240 Color LCD
Ports: 4 USB, 1 RJ45 Serial
Modem: 33.6 kbs
Multiple languages
Remote configuration
45 health applications
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Contact Information
Steve Brown
CEO
Health Hero Network Ltd
40 Abbey Road
Monkstown, Co. Dublin
Ireland
Tel: 00353 1 280 3997
Fax: 00353 1 280 9806
stevebrown@healthhero.com
Mainstreaming eHealth