Elderly Health Information Management System

The core value of the elderly health information management system is to open up the health data breakpoints of medical care, elderly care, and family, and transform the elderly health information that used to be scattered in different hospital medical records, community physical examination reports, and children's mobile phone memos into a dynamic management tool that is traceable, early warning, and linkable. According to statistics from mature projects that have been implemented in China, this system can increase the efficiency of medical treatment for sudden illnesses in the elderly by 47%, and improve the compliance of chronic disease management by 62%. It is currently the best implementation path to solve the pain points of health management in home and community elderly care scenarios.

Last month I went to a neighborhood elderly care service center in a western provincial capital for research, and I happened to meet 72-year-old Aunt Li, who was carrying a canvas bag to prescribe antihypertensive medication. The bag was stuffed with medical records from three different hospitals, a half-stack of vague physical examination reports, and a small notebook to record the dosage of medication. She told me that she had a sudden dizziness at home six months ago and was sent to the emergency room. The doctor went through her medical records for ten minutes before finding the results of her last renal function test. He was afraid that the prescribed medicine would increase the burden on her kidneys. Her children were working out of town, and he could not explain the recent changes in her indicators on the phone. Now the community has recorded the system for her. She wears an NFC bracelet that costs more than ten yuan on her wrist. She goes to a community hospital or a nearby tertiary emergency department to check her allergy history, past medical history, blood pressure monitoring records for the past three months, and medication list. Last week, her blood pressure exceeded the 140/90 threshold for three consecutive mornings. The system automatically sent an early warning to the contracted family doctor and her daughter. The doctor came to adjust the dosage of the medicine that day, and there was no problem.

It’s interesting to say that I have been involved in this industry for five or six years. There are actually two completely different ideas in the industry regarding the positioning of this system. Teams with technical backgrounds generally feel that they need to "open up all links": it is best to connect to the HIS systems of all tertiary hospitals and the public health systems of the community. Data from smart blood pressure monitors and blood glucose meters in the elderly's homes can be automatically synchronized to the background, and then a large AI model can be built to predict the risk of disease, and all functions can be crammed into it. However, most people who provide front-line elderly care services do not agree with this direction. Their reasons are very real: at least 30% of the elderly living alone cannot even use smartphones or connect to smart devices. If the pressure of data entry is put entirely on community social workers, the already insufficient manpower will only be more stressed. In the end, the system will become a display project for show.

I have seen a project in a certain street in the Pearl River Delta before. At the beginning, more than 3 million was spent on fully automated docking. It had to connect the systems of three tertiary hospitals and provide free smart monitoring equipment to all the elderly. After three months of implementation, the usage rate was less than 20%. Either the elderly thought the equipment was too complicated and would not use it, or the family members were worried about data leakage and being targeted by health care product sellers. Later, the project team directly overturned the original plan: there was no need to be forced to connect to all hospital systems. The elderly could just take pictures of their medical records and enter them into the social worker after seeing the doctor; there was no need to force the use of smart devices, and the nursing assistants who came to do home care every week could help measure blood pressure and blood sugar and input them into the system; the data was not uploaded to the public cloud, but was all stored in the local server in the street. Only authorized family doctors and bound family members can check it, and every time the data is retrieved, a trace is left. Three months after the adjustment, the system usage rate rose to 87%. Many elderly people took the initiative to ask how to record their own physical examination reports.

The privacy issue that is the most controversial issue nowadays actually has different solutions. For places that favor efficiency, blockchain will be used to store certificates, and data will be encrypted and uploaded to the cloud. Each call will have an immutable record, and the elderly can revoke the viewing permissions of family members or doctors at any time; places that are more cautious will use localized deployment, and the data will not even be exported to the street network. If family members want to check historical records, they must bring their ID cards to the community to scan facial recognition. Although it is troublesome, the acceptance of the elderly and family members is generally higher. After all, many people have suffered from health information leaks and harassment by health care product marketing.

In fact, my biggest feeling after doing so many projects is that the elderly health information management system has never been a "smart elderly care gimmick" used to cope with assessments. Its core is always to provide the elderly with the basics - without any fancy functions, it can quickly submit a complete medical history to the doctor when the elderly are uncomfortable, it can sound a reminder when the elderly forgets to take medicine, and it can notify the person who should be notified as soon as possible when something happens to the elderly. This is enough. The last time I went to the community for a return visit, Aunt Li held up a bracelet to show off to me, saying that she had asked her granddaughter to record a voice pack as a reminder to take medicine, and it was more effective than anyone else. You see, technology that can be put into practice is truly useful.