Oct 19 2012
More than 35 million Americans are over age 65, and that number is set to nearly double in 20 years. Those 85 and older are the fastest growing segment of the population in the United States and many currently suffer from some form of chronic disease and some form of disability; and if possible, prefer to remain at home rather than transfer to a care facility1.
In an effort to make caring for patients outside of hospital and nursing home walls more accessible, and to improve quality of life for the elderly, AT&T* and Embedded Wireless are teaming up to wirelessly enable a new remote patient monitoring platform. The companies today announced that AT&T will be the exclusive 4G LTE mobile internet provider for the Zilant™ Wellness Remote Monitoring Platform and a mobile personal emergency response (mPERS) system.
Chronic conditions account for nearly 80 percent of physician visits, more than 80 percent of hospital in-patient stays, more than 90 percent of prescriptions, and more than 95 percent of home healthcare visits. Patients recently hospitalized with chronic conditions are at significantly higher risk for readmission; this accounts for an estimated 85 percent of the cost of healthcare in U.S.A.2
Advances in the use of wireless technologies in providing for remote healthcare like the Zilant™ Wellness Platform and the mPERS Pendant enables caregivers to efficiently monitor patients at dramatically lower care costs. The Zilant™ Wellness Platform is a home monitoring platform that integrates a system of monitoring devices and environment sensors to facilitate elder care, chronic disease management and independent living. The mPERS Pendant is a personal emergency response device worn around the neck. It will continuously monitor activity, location and can detect falls. It will manually or automatically initiate two-way voice communication for emergency response while simultaneously transmitting relevant data such as location and relevant personal information to the pre-designated parties.
"We're teaming up with Embedded Wireless to make in-home remote patient monitoring simpler and more effective for healthcare organizations to deploy and scale," said Chris Penrose, senior vice president, AT&T Emerging Devices. "Systems can be fully operational at home within hours of a patient's discharge from the hospital, giving caregivers and healthcare providers the ability to remotely monitor data gathered by home based sensors and monitoring devices – all over the nation's largest 4G network."
Zilant allows elders to share their daily activities with caregivers and family through the cloud with a secure web browser and password. Key features are motion detection, environment monitoring, vital signs measurement, 24x7 personal emergency alert pendant (PERS) and video observation. With mPERS, patients will be truly mobile with a direct cellular link to a caregiver over the AT&T 4G LTE wireless network. At home, mPERS reverts to a WiFi connection with the Zilant™ which integrates data from the mPERS device and communicates with caregivers through the wireless network connection.
"We are very excited to work with AT&T - a global leader in wireless, high speed Internet, Wi-Fi and cloud based services," said Dr. Rama Shukla, CEO of Embedded Wireless, Inc. "With Zilant™ Wellness Platform technology and solutions built around it, Embedded Wireless aims to enable high-quality and low-cost remote patient monitoring and eldercare services across the US and globally. Working with AT&T gives us access to the nation's largest 4G and provides innovative solutions connecting caregivers (including Elder Care Services) to patients and clients for monitoring, response and intervention on a flexible and expandable platform. Patients and their loved ones will enjoy peace of mind and a sense of security knowing their activity and biometric data allows quick response to any adverse event. We are passionate about driving improvements in the economics and quality of life for the elderly living at home with our state of the art WEB 2.0 based wireless technologies."
The Zilant™ Wellness Platform, now being piloted in eldercare environments in the U.S. and Europe, is expected to launch later this year; and will be exhibited next week at the National Association of Home Care meeting in Orlando, booth #737; and also at the Connected Health Symposium in Boston, booth #15.
Source: http://www.att.com/