Contributed by Paul Akin, CIO, Outreach Health Services
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If you are like most of us in the Gen-X generation, we are facing/will face a huge challenge: how to take care of mom and dad while raising a family of our own and pursuing a career. Our parents (Baby Boomer Generation) don’t want to leave their home and move into a skilled nursing or assisted living facility. Compound that you may live in a separate city or state, and
you still want to be able to provide mom and dad with a solution that prevents multiple trips to the emergency room.
Ultimately that is what Outreach’s partnership with Sovrinti is set out to accomplish. Developed with support from the National Institute on Aging, the Sovrinti system uses a unique set of home sensors to identify Activities of Daily Living (ADLs) and look for changes in individual routines. Sovrinti’s home sensors along with their advanced AI will provide Outreach with continuous updates to improve senior care at home. This will provide Outreach Health’s care teams direct insight into changing care needs and provide alerts for possible intervention.
Real world example:
You may speak with your loved one a few times a week but mostly small talk about the weather, friends, and family. What you don’t know is that your loved one is beginning to develop a urinary tract infection (UTI) and trips to the restroom have increased dramatically especially during the nighttime hours. This is where Sovrinti’s technology comes into play. With a sensor installed in the toilet, they can detect a noticeable change in restroom behavior proactively notify the care team. With this information now available to the Outreach caregiver, they can quickly intervene and work alongside their physician to obtain timely care to prevent a trip to an acute setting (i.e., ER or hospital stay). This is only one example out of many that we hope to be able to detect and proactively respond to.
Not only will a combination of Sovrinti’s sensors and AI technology address real-time care needs, but also guide long-term care planning. As we collect more data points on patients with various underlying conditions, we will prepare better long-term treatment options to improve overall outcomes. Perhaps we can better monitor eating habits of patients who have diabetes as one of their underlying comorbidities.
Through a combination microwave and refrigerator sensors and wireless blood sugar monitors, we can quickly intervene before their insulin levels become life-threatening. Providing and predicting better outcomes will help us fulfill the “triple-aim” of improving the patient experience of care, improving the overall health of a population, and reducing the per capita cost of health care. A “win-win” for all involved as your loved one can stay at home while reducing the overall cost to the healthcare system.
About Outreach Health Services:
Since 1975, Outreach Health has been a family-owned and operated provider of Home and Community-Based Services (HCBS and provides services to over 5,000 Medicaid recipients. The Long-Term Support Services our caregivers provide allows this vulnerable population to receive high-quality health care in the best and lowest cost
setting – their home. Outreach Health serves all 254 counties in Texas and parts of Arizona. In Texas we have 23 locations and 2 in Arizona.
About Sovriniti:
Sovrinti uses home sensing data from sensors developed by sister company Birkeland Current to identify actionable changes in behavior and enable moving from reactive care
situations
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