Chronic disease management

Portal for chronic disease promotes self-care

KITCHENER, Ont. – St. Mary’s General Hospital will be leveraging the Internet to provide people with chronic disease greater access to the information and services needed for optimal health.

The St. Mary’s Chronic Disease Wellness Portal, developed in collaboration with MedManager Interactive Corporation, will assist multidisciplinary care givers at St. Mary’s to link with hospital clients who are living with diabetes, heart failure, asthma or COPD.

The portal will give participants who are registered in some of St. Mary’s chronic disease programs access to a range of educational, planning, data management, and communication tools that promote improved self-care. St. Mary’s healthcare staff will have the ability to monitor and interact with their clients and provide the proactive assistance required to maximize long-term wellness.

“Chronic disease affects a growing number of people in our community and St. Mary’s is committed to adopting innovative technology and healthcare practices to ensure our patients can conveniently connect with the information and interactive support they need to be well,” said Don Shilton, Vice President of Patient Services at St. Mary’s.

St. Mary’s partnership with MedManager began several years ago with a clinical trial of the original portal technology involving clients of the hospital’s diabetes education centre. Patients utilizing the diabetes portal experienced a decrease in their A1C, a measure of longer-term blood sugar control, and their triglycerides, a component of an individual’s cholesterol profile.

Other positive outcomes included “Internet” patients feeling more satisfied with their diabetes care. Healthcare staff assigned to the portal group achieved greater service delivery capacity, in terms of the number of patients that could be managed through remote monitoring. The positive results of the year-long trial were published in the Canadian Journal of Diabetes in December 2006.

“The new Chronic Disease Wellness Portal builds on the successful trial model and we anticipate that the wellness and efficiency improvements noted in the trial will carry over to other chronic disease populations,” said MedManager President and CEO Michael Cowan. The multi-disease state portal incorporates significant input from St. Mary’s healthcare staff, who Cowan considers “true champions of innovation.”

“St. Mary’s chronic disease patient portal is an excellent example of healthcare innovation in our region, and an important component and model for our future eHealth initiatives,” added Dr. Glenn Holder, eHealth Lead for the Waterloo Wellington Local Health Integration Network.

The diabetes and heart failure management features of the portal will launch this month and the respiratory features will follow in July.

About St. Mary’s General Hospital
St. Mary’s General Hospital is an adult, acute-care hospital that delivers innovative, excellent, care to the residents of Waterloo Region and beyond. St. Mary’s is also home to the Regional Cardiac Care Centre. The hospital continues to live the Mission of its founders, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Hamilton by providing compassionate care with dignity and respect in a healing environment. St. Mary’s is a member of St. Joseph’s Health Care System, and affiliated with the Father Sean O’Sullivan Research Centre and McMaster University, Hamilton.
www.smgh.ca.

About MedManager Interactive Corp.
MedManager is a leading provider of Internet-based chronic disease management solutions and services. MedManager portals provide individuals and healthcare professionals with online access to the educational, planning, monitoring, and communication tools needed to proactively and interactively manage chronic disease. MedManager’s online diabetes and cardiac disease management system is licensed as a Class II Medical Device by Health Canada. MedManager’s quality management system is certified to the ISO 13485 standard for medical devices. MedManager Interactive Corporation is a privately-held company. For more information please visit www.MedManager.ca.