Las Vegas, United States – MedWand Solutions Inc., has launched the Urban-Rural Healthcare Alliance, a program designed to support increased access to clinical quality healthcare via partnerships between cities and surrounding rural areas. With support from collaborating companies including AT&T, HP, and Oracle, MedWand aims to break down geographical and staffing barriers to increase the efficiency and equity of healthcare provision in underserved rural and inner-city communities.
“What started as a multi-sensor device to enable doctors to examine patients remotely via the internet has developed into an entire ecosystem that, when appropriately administered, provides a bridge to universal access to high-quality healthcare and health equity,” says Robert Rose, MedWand president & CEO.
Rose adds, “Our Urban-Rural Healthcare Alliance transforms what has been understood as telemedicine by absorbing the provider-to-patient video conference into a greater whole that addresses critical issues such as clinical staff shortages, health equity, and overall cost to patients, providers, and payers. It is just the start of how MedWand can be deployed to support tele-triage and remote patient monitoring all integrated with existing healthcare provider workflows and software.”
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), up to 3.5 billion people, almost half the world’s population lack access to the health services needed, with almost 100 million people pushed to extreme poverty each year because of out-of-pocket expenses. Leading the way in delivering virtual healthcare solutions to clinicians and patients, MedWand’s VirtualCare platform provides advanced hub-and-spoke telemedicine services to connect an urban medical centre with multiple rural, or inner-city communities, equipped with MedWand Mobile Clinics.
Facilitating the mission to enable clinical examinations from any location at any time, customisable MedWand Clinics, VirtualCare platform, and Command Centre monitoring station are complemented by IoT connectivity from AT&T, mobile computing devices from HP, and cloud infrastructure services from Oracle.
Introduced at CES, a MedWand Command Centre monitoring station provides a single point of monitoring for up to 1,200 patients. The Command Centre allows clinicians to establish triggers to warn of excessive variance for captured vitals, and if patients are part of a daily monitoring regime, vital trend charts can be displayed. The Command Centre also acts as a communications hub between supervising clinicians and in-field medical assistants or nurses. When a field worker needs to communicate with a supervising clinician, the Command Centre can immediately convert an ongoing on-site exam into a full virtual consultation, complete with video conferencing and remote monitoring.
As a provider in IoT with more than 100M connected devices, AT&T helps MedWand meet the needs for internet-based communication for MedWand’s Mobile Clinics irrespective of their location. “Now more than ever, connectivity is emerging as a vital technology for the healthcare industry to provide equitable care, reduce costs and improve patient outcomes,” says Joe Drygas, AT&T VP of public sector, government, education & medical solutions. “Our work with MedWand is another example of how our reliable and highly secure IoT connectivity is helping remove barriers that might keep someone from getting healthcare.”
Providing rugged Android OS tablet and desktop computing systems that MedWand Clinics operate on, HP helps MedWand meet critical operational reliability requirements in healthcare.
Hosting the MedWand VirtualCare platform, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) provides a set of cloud services, including Oracle Autonomous Database, with operational security for sensitive medical data. “We’re absolutely committed to providing cloud technologies that improve care access and drive informed decisions. With the MedWand VirtualCare platform running on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, we’re helping to increase access to healthcare in underserved markets and to reduce the cost burden on patients,” says Chris Gandolfo, senior vice president, cloud venture, Oracle.
MedWand recently gained FDA 510(k) clearance and is now commercially available in the US and other select countries, providing internet-based clinical exams as a core component of a medical provider’s healthcare solution. Transforming the capabilities of telemedicine, MedWand is available in mobile clinic, ruggedised Mobile clinic, and desktop clinic configurations to meet a wide range of high mobility or fixed installation requirements. By enabling real-time vitals capture and live monitoring from any location with access to the internet, MedWand provides the missing link in the delivery of high-quality healthcare, irrespective of geographical distance.
When patient care depends on telemedicine, choose MedWand. More information on the Rural-Urban Healthcare Alliance is to be announced later. For information on the MedWand system and MedWand Solutions, Inc. visit Medwand.
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