Sign Louisiana Banking Medical History Easy

Industry sign banking louisiana medical history easy

this is a scenario that happens all too often you're in a medical crisis and you need to see more than one physician unfortunately it's easier for you to travel from physician to physician to physician than it is for your medical records to do the same today we're talking with Darla Brown of intake dot me and she's got a solution coming up on get social health welcome to get social health a conversation about social media and how it's being used to help hospitals social practices health care practitioners and patients connect and engage via social media get social health brings you conversations with professionals actively working in the field and provides real life examples of healthcare social media in action here is your host Janet Kennedy welcome to get social health today I'm joined by darla Brown she started her career in technology as a web engineer and grew to lead some of the most successful product and engineering teams in Los Angeles when she went through a cancer treatment in 2010 she was surprised to find out how few of the healthcare products available for her were designed from a patient's perspective as the CEO founder of intake top me she works to empower people with their own health welcome to get social health Darla thank you so much Janet it's great to be here you know they say when you're going to do a product development when you're going to be an entrepreneur when you're going to start out there you should not do what you think other people need you should solve a real problem now you obviously have totally experienced this real problem yeah and I think that's true to a certain extent but because I have experienced the health care system up close and personal I think I come at it from a more empathetic perspective and that's always useful when you're creating products like this so I think that is very a true you should be solving problems that are out there that you know about but it's even it can be even more powerful to solve a problem that you've experienced firsthand yourself and I think it brings a greater empathy and a perspective to solving the problem i will say when I was a pregnant I couldn't wait to have a baby because i knew i was going to invent the million dollar baby bottle and i had no inspiration of any kind the whole time that I was a young mother it just didn't work out at all so I guess I'm coming at it a little late in life so tell me a little bit about what your experience was what were you trying to use as a tool when you were having your cancer about that made you say this isn't working for me well you know my background is in technology as you mentioned before in the intro so I kind of come at problems with that perspective and I was really surprised to see that the healthcare systems were really designed in the 80s and 90s they weren't talking to each other and some of the problems that have already been fixed in other industries like for example in the banking industry still haven't been fixed in the health care industry so I came at it from that perspective were you actually in health care before uh in take me or were you in a different vertical all together no I was in a different vertical i worked at entertainment and media startups throughout my career and I switched over to health care after I got sick and then got better I have to say that's probably a perfect place to be because a lot of the startups that I see and a lot of the things being designed are so complicated and yes we're dealing with really complicated issues very complicated data but the end result is it's the user who's got to be able to deal with that and many folks are new to smartphones are new to technology particularly if you happen to be you know over the age of 50 so if you don't think make things easy and accessible as the entertainment and media industry has then I think you're missing the boat yeah I think so and you know going back to my example before the banking industry you know they all the banks talk to each other which is why you can go to any ATM and withdraw money and people know how to do that they know how nowadays how to do online banking and transfer money between different systems and that interoperability doesn't exist for the most part in the health care system so I think there's a real opportunity there to create products that are familiar to people in other industries and use them in health care as well I know that interoperability is a problem that has to be addressed it isn't something that you can ignore however it seems like it's a huge challenge where do you see the problem is where who's the gatekeeper who's keeping this from moving forward when I say Who I mean what really yeah i think that the big players in this space are really comfortable with the systems they've created and they're not there's no incentive for them to change really and until recently with meaningful use and some of the other things that are coming along you know there hasn't been a any incentive for these systems to begin talking to each other so so is that an issue when you were developing your idea are actually you know we're really getting into the weeds here let's go back what is in take me yeah so thank you it in take me is a healthcare platform for patients and for doctors and it helps patients manage all of their healthcare matters so you can check in for your doctor visit and share your medical history and your medical records with your entire healthcare team and you can store all your medical records and even share individual or batch record batch records securely with your doctor and you know and it also has some tracking features in it so that you can track symptoms and like your different medications that you're taking and illnesses that you've had so that when you do go in and check in to your doctor that you're giving them a full picture of your healthcare history because you have such a limited time with your doctor nowadays that you really need to make sure that you're using that time to get the best outcome and value for your care all right that sounds like Nirvana anyone that's almost unattainable that seems like the simple explanation of what any online service you do so what makes your process different and unique how is it you've been able to crack this code when it seems like so many others have not been able to well we really focus on providing the information at the point of care and I think some of the previous symptoms you know have been great you know you're at home and you're you're tracking your medication or you're using a Fitbit and you're tracking your steps or whatever but how do you get that information to your doctor in a format that they'll use at the time that they need it and so that's really the problem that we're focused on is delivering the information to the doctor at the time of care and you're right it is a big huge gnarly problem but you know we feel like our take on it is really going to help help revolutionize the way people approach their doctor visit is this driven from the patient's perspective or is this driven by the need from the physician's office yeah so we part of our when we developing our products we talked to a lot of doctors and a lot of patience and the main problem that we kept hearing from different sides was communication communication communication that is the big complaint from both sides and so we really feel that it can't just be addressed from the patient side or from the doctor side we have to create tools and empower them both to come together so that they can have those conversations from an empowered informed place so that's really been our overarching kind of way we approach it now my physicians office they have a patient portal which I can log into and look at the information that they're starting to tag for me I can do some limited communications there it's a little bit out of sight out of mind so when i get a message I'm like yeah I ought to check that out but you know I'm not engaging with great frequency and certainly I'm not doing anything about putting my day-to-day health information in that system however I'm thinking from the physician or the physicians group or the the group that owns the physicians groups perspective they get the patient portal all right I have to have it here it is here's my patient portal what why would they look at intake me well it's kind of exactly what you were saying is what is your incentive to go in and look at that other than when you know you're going in to see your doctor if he it instead is on your smartphone and it's kind of worked into your daily workflow of how you use other applications I think that it's more likely that you're going to capture important information that you can then give to your doctor and then they on the other side I would say you know if you have multiple doctors those patient portals aren't usually talking to each other unless you happen to be able to stay within the same health care system so that becomes a problem for people that have very serious issues like cancer or even chronic conditions where they have to see a lot of different doctors they may have you know five different doctors that they see which means they have five different patient portals so our goal with intake me is to automate that so that all of the their disparate patient portals are sinking into intake me so they have a central location to store all of that information that's so important you just perfectly described Regina holidays situation who is a very well-known national of patient advocate and the situation that her husband had yeah the very very quick and fast moving answer because it was impossible to get records and to have all of the different physicians that he was seeing understand all the different data that he needed to have so now I'm trying to wrap my head around well what does this thing look like is it is it a tablet app is that an iphone app is it an online portal where you would log in how is this data collected what does it look like yeah it is an online portal its cloud-based and it's HIPAA compliant and when you log in it looks familiar to other applications maybe a little like LinkedIn or Facebook so there's a timeline and down the left-hand side and at this up there's a box where you can enter in whatever it is that you want to report whether it's a symptom a new medication or upload a medical record from your doctor so we're trying to use those familiar user in faces but use it for the health care system to record your health information that actually sounds really attractive the patient portal that I've seen even though it's or that I use even though it's only a it seems to be a few years old looks like it was designed in the nineteen eighty yeah I've experienced that too and you know it's really important to have all of your help together you know we manage our finances so closely we all know what our bank account balance is but do you know you know are you ready to go to the doctor and have like your health balance so that you can present it to them and get the best care possible all right now I'm trying to envision um this is something that is definitely patient driven or would a say a physician's practice actually subscribe to this for all their patients yeah so it's both it an individual patient can use it and get a lot of benefit from it just from keeping all of their medical data in one place and keeping it in a secure Locker like that but where the real Network and power I think will come in as when doctors begin to use it so we have in take me for patients on the you know more consumer side and then we have in take me for doctors and the to work and sync together and that's the platform now you haven't launched yet is that correct yep we are in development right now and we're looking to roll out in October we've already been doing you know some demos to doctors and some consumers already and but will for sure have our MVP out in October so Oh excellent now when you launch it you'll be going into a beta rounds i assume is it a limited number of patients and offices and are you getting folks volunteering to be part of it yeah we already have a waiting list signed up to use it and we have like I said been showing it to doctors and getting their feedback all along throughout the process and but in terms of a limited number I don't think we're going to limit the beta you know if you sign up now for it we're definitely going to give people that are signed up on the list now some free months to use it so it's a good incentive for doctors to get signed up have you figured out a pricing model yet we're yeah we have it's free for patients to use and then doctors pay a monthly subscription fee but we also think that you know larger systems like universities and large employers will find some benefit to this because they're paying large insurance bills and of course as we know the more engaged your your population is in their health it reduces the overall cost of health care so we see some of that plane into our model as well how about the percentage of the population the the say frequent flyers to the emergency room who probably need this monitoring more than anyone but probably don't have access to two computers on a regular basis do you see this is something ever to work effectively for them have you got a plan for working with this population that's not very digitally oriented so I think that you know that is definitely a population that we'd love to be able to help and my co-founder has done a lot of work with low-income patients and you know understanding that population and some of the special use cases that they require is really important but it's not something that we're able to address in this first version but when they do get into the doctor's office you know they'll still be able to check in electronically through a kiosk with the help of somebody that you know in the office okay well you know you just mentioned your co-founder who is dr. Emily Lou why don't you tell me a little bit about her and how'd you meet her so we met a couple of years ago through Stanford University's technology entrepreneurship course it's a course that is delivered online through their computer science department and we you know found each other you know through the search tools and just started talking and even though she is a doctor and of course I identify more so as a patient we both are really passionate about patient empowerment and how that can you know impact the health care system for the better and so we immediately bonded over that and started brainstorming you know ways that we can work together our project that we worked on there was really well received and so we decided to you know go out and do and take me after the course ended so it really was an idea that you had already kind of bounced around together while you were in the course yeah yeah definitely and it's an idea that I had when I was actually going through cancer treatment because every time I I had to go to several different doctors before I finally was diagnosed with cancer and at each doctor's visit they would give me the intake forms and you know i would have to fill out these forms and i was getting sicker and sicker and i know that i wasn't providing the full picture of my health to them but i was so sick that you know you know it was just like this moment where I was like this is something that technology could fix why do I have to fill allow the same information and on top of that I also was given the same you know really invasive tests at every doctor visit and little did I know that I didn't have to do that if I would have just had my medical records with me at the time so that's really where you know the idea started and then I started you know brainstorming with Emily and she said yeah you know this is a big problem she was a med student at the time and now she's a resident in San Francisco and we've worked really well together and I think it's our shared passion to do something about the health care system that kind of keeps us going are you in San Francisco as well I'm in LA so we work remotely with each other that sounds very complicated but in this virtual world I guess there are ways to work together and not b in the same place yeah and you know Emily I think really represents the new breed of of dr. you know she grew up you know she came of age using technology and you know is thrown into the system of you know using emrs that were designed in the 90s and so she's very frustrated with the amount of time that she has to spend clicking around for each patient she said she spends more time clicking after the visit then she does actually engaging with her patients a lot of the time so there's this new generation of residents and doctors that are really wanting these tools they you know and demanding them and which is why she and I really connected now I'm wondering obviously you're not talking about replacing EMR you're talking about basically having a I don't know a cache an ability to have in one place the summary of these medical records that just to make it more accessible for the patient and but also more accessible for the physician but you're not trying to step in and be the next epic or all scripts or anything like that no no we're not and we've actually a you know spoken to some of the bigger EHR vendors and there when we first started they weren't open at all there was no way to integrate with them but over the last couple of years we've seen that begin to change and so we've had discussions of ways that we can begin to integrate and you know provide our product on top of the EHR systems now that sounds like a massive technological challenge and I know that's your background but that sounds like a lot more than two people yeah well we have a development team that had you know that we work with and they have healthcare experience but I'm you know also we're not the only ones that are trying to crack that nut you know there are teams that are other companies that are providing platforms that you know we can also leverage and build upon and so we're having those discussions as well okay that makes sense you mentioned a few questions ago about you both believe in the empowered patient and I know that you also host a tweet chat they're trying to bring patients together in community and conversation so can you tell me a little bit about hashtag patient chat how that came about and and when you hold it sure yeah we started the empowered patient chat on Twitter when we first started in take me in 2013 it was one of the first real healthcare chats there were some bigger ones that came before us but we grabbed that hashtag as a way to just begin those conversations with patients and and begin to get their feedback about what we to build so it really was like our petri dish we were you know asking questions and asking you know what were their problems and getting immediate user customer feedback and so it really helped us create our product and so over the past two years since we started patient chat it has really evolved into a force all its own and so we brought on a community manager and her name is Christina and she has experience managing tweet chats she also manages the GYN CSM chat which is a a gynecological cancer tweet chat and so she helps us manage it and she's been really great but before that Emily and I were the ones that were you know getting the schedule together and contacting all the special guests and it just has grown and really become a force all its own like I said right now I'm not calling you out here but let me clarify in my mind when I think about healthcare chats with a unifying hashtag I think of it as a very open conversation that doesn't necessarily belong to anybody but in essence you are a business and you started a patient chatting and you just said that you are going to take or you were using some of their feedback as product development ideas so do you see a challenge and being basically the open arbiter of information versus utilizing it for yourself benefit I haven't ever had a conflict between the two because you know I approach it as a patient myself and so I you know and we're very open about what we're doing um you know we're not taking anybody's ideas or anything like that we'll come up with you know an idea and we'll run it by you know the people on patient chat or just on social media in general and get there get their feedback and some of our ideas they love and some of them unlike yeah I'd never used that and so you know we're pretty open about how we use it you know and like I said patient chat is really a force its own it it is run by us and we come up with the topics but you know we don't really see a problem between using the two okay well tell me a little bit about who's been on the chat before well we've had some really great topics and conversations and you know one of our topics our most popular topic last year was let's create the e patient superhero and so we used the hour to imagine you know what what is the empowered patient super here will look like and it was just you know people throwing out words and ideas and you know what does e stand for its educated and powered engaged you know how big elddis really cool ideas and by the end of the chat they you know somebody was like I'm gonna go draw this superhero and it so it was like this really like community effort of just like coming around a topic and being really creative and you know it's just really fun but you know we've also had some really serious guests on there we've had a doctor zach berger from Johns Hopkins he's an author of a book called how to talk to your doctor and we've also had a martini Aaron clue who wrote the take-charge patient we are also working on a chat 4 2016 with the Myo innovation group and we've also done a couple chats with caregiving calm and that's a really popular that's always a really good time as well on one of our most popular chats excellent well the interesting thing about your chat is it actually happens during the workday is that correct yeah it's every friday at ten a.m. pacific 1 p.m. eastern time hashtag patient chat we've tried doing actually dr. burgers chat that we did we had to do in the evening because he works you know and that one was really popular so next year we're thinking of you know maybe alternating it and doing it so that more health care professionals can join in at least once a month on the patient chat because we just found that when you know both sides are represented both patient and health care providers that it adds another dimension to the conversation absolutely the chats that I've been on when I get a chance to actually communicate with another physician I say another physician like I was one but when there are medical professionals there it really does enhance and I can definitely sense from the patient's perspective they really appreciate when a medical professional is taking their time to actively participate in a conversation yeah absolutely it adds an openness and reassurance I think to the conversation absolutely well I'm really excited about seeing this I am on a list so i assume sometime in october i'm going to get an email that will say here's how you sign up yes intake top me you can go there and click on sign up send us your email and you'll be on the VIP list the very important patient or provider list you know one of the things that occurs to me as I've been visioning this process is you know while I'm not a kid and unfortunately I've been very healthy so my medical history is pretty straight forward but holy cow I'm trying to envision doing all the data entry to pull that thing together music e hours and hours of work to fill out my profile and get it going no you know it really depends if you are if you do have multiple chronic conditions you know I guess it could take more time but we're really trying to automate as much of the process as we can by integrating with patient portals and you know the blue button initiative and you know anywhere that we can automate the import of data we're looking at that that is excellent well I'm really excited about this this service and this product I think there's an incredible need for it and you've done such an interesting job validating with the community all along the process so I think this is something that there is a need for and I hope we have good adoption issues and I also hope that you get great interoperability thank you so much Janet and it's been i likewise to you you know i think what you're doing is really great and you're helping to get the word out about some of these initiatives and we really appreciate it so thank you for having me and now here's a social media success tip hi I'm Paul levy senior adviser with black sabinius LLC a negotiation support and advisory firm my social media tip today is this make it personal whether it's on a blog or Twitter or Facebook right in your own voice let people know what you care about and what you think about you've been listening to the get social health podcast the show notes are located at get social health com to join our health care social media journey follow at get social health on Twitter and start a conversation thanks for listening to get social health I very much appreciate your being here today if you have a moment please stop by itunes and drop in a reviewer or rating it helps me find a broader audience for the show or share the links in twitter in facebook or in linkedin with your friends or colleagues