Recipient Organization
CREATEABILITY CONCEPTS, INC.
5610 CRAWFORDSVILLE RD STE 2401
INDIANAPOLIS,IN 462243727
Performing Department
(N/A)
Non Technical Summary
The significant gap in the healthcare services available to rural seniors is well supported by prior research. Frequently, rural seniors must travel long distances regardless of weather conditions to healthcare facilities. The senior's family members often worry about their loved ones and may not get accurate information regarding their health and behaviors, and falls, missed meds, and nutrition issues are often under-reported.Private Duty Nursing companies, Skilled Nursing companies, Outpatient Rehabilitation Providers, occupational therapy agencies and hospitals all struggle with how to serve rural seniors because they are dispersed over large geographies. The typical human-dominant model is costly and struggles to prevent healthcare incidents and readmissions from previous ER visits. This is a global problem, but the aging of America has raised the awareness within our nation.Existing solutions are expensive, do not automatically report what led up to the incident or situation, and are not designed to help prevent situations. Most require high-speed Internet services which is a mismatch given low coverage in most rural areas. Also, the lack of scalability and customization options drives the cost up and requires most seniors to buy more capability or service than they need.Rural-Health-Mate (RHM) is a system that helps rural seniors maintain their independence in their home through the use of unique and cost-effective remote monitoring and tele-health techniques. Unlike other approaches, RHM does not rely on high speed internet or video cameras with remote technicians.Current experimental remote monitoring systems focus on a specific illness or disease such as Congestive Heart Failure (CHF), Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) or diabetes. Instead, RHM addresses the top three major areas that cause rural seniors to result in extended and expensive hospitalizations: falls, medication non-adherence, and safety violations (such as leaving the stove on unattended, etc.).Also, current "Smart home" technology is focused on a younger audience that wishes to remotely scan their home, or remotely control lights or locks. The intelligence in RHM is focused on the rural senior, and therefore also collects data in the home through an intelligent network of sensors, vital sign appliances, and the senior's activity patterns. RHM uses a distributed intelligence model:- an in-home Control Center that collects sensor data and vital signs, and communicates with the individual on their TV, and- cloud computing that relays notifications and alerts to the proper personnel as well as providing a portal for coordinating care with family members, caregivers and healthcare providers.CreateAbility will build on the success of Phase I and complete the development in Phase II in preparation for full-scale commercialization in Phase III. Phase III will incorporate a nationwide business-to-Business (B2B) model, where CreateAbility's customers are the businesses that serve rural seniors. These include rehab services, skilled nursing, and private duty nursing companies.The basic methods and approaches that will be used to collect and inform the target audiences are:A. Confirm our findings from the Phase I pilot study using a series of focus groups, phone surveys and face-to-face meeting s with rural healthcare providers.Assistive Technology Partners will facilitate the focus groups using the Nominal Group Technique (NGT). The NGT approach guarantees that all members get an equal voice in the outcomes of the group's impression and voting on the importance of new features and functions.Phone surveys will be handled using a scripted tool to minimize variances of the responses. Face-to-face meetings with existing healthcare providers and support personnel to rural seniors will also be scripted, and yet still provide for the additional data that may be unique to each meeting.B. Enhance the Phase I prototype based on this feedbackThe in-home Control Center will be enhanced to support more vital sign monitoring devices, and to function well in the homes of rural seniors.The cloud services will be enhanced to handle a deeper engagement with the senior and their support team.One important benefit of the RHM approach is that the system does not require the senior to learn about technology, or how to use technology. The senior will receive instructions from a sufficiently large tablet that doubles as a digital picture frame of their family or grandkids. Sensors are small and discreet, and are frequently invisible. This approach is fundamental to the adoption process.C. Initiate the Extended EvaluationAfter the emerging prototype is enhanced, it will be replicated. This will enable CreateAbility and it's team to perform an extended evaluation of the emerging prototype by placing the RHM system in the homes of rural seniors and providing a high level of support to them as needed on this new approach.Another fundamental benefit of the RHM development approach is that the extended evaluation is interlaced with the continual development of the system. This requires the extended evaluation to begin within 12 months after the project start to give our development team and researchers sufficient data on what aspects of the system require special attention. As new features and bug fixes are developed and tested, they can be immediately rolled out to the homes of the study participants. The support team will facilitate any training and transition planning required in the smooth adoption of these new features.D. Analyze the Socio-Economic ImpactThe project concludes with 1) a return on investment investigation relative to the current rural healthcare delivery model, and 2) an impact analysis of the RHM approach which includes the socio-economic impact and training and educational components required for a successful roll out of the project in the commercialization phase.The ultimate goals of the RHM project are:1) Complete the research and development of the RHM system to prepare for a successfully transition into the commercialization phase,2) Assist the network of existing rural healthcare providers and services in a smooth roll out of the RHM system approach, and3) Communicate and inform rural seniors and their support network on the benefits of RHM to communities in rural America through coordination with existing outreach programs that have proven success with improving the lives of rural Americans, such as the regional Rural Health Administrations and Rural Hospital Associations.Expected outcomes and societal impacts:In addition to reduced readmissions and the conservation of scarce and expensive healthcare resources, RHM helps rural seniors maximize the amount of time that they can stay at their current residence thereby maintaining their social network and maximizing the choices available to them. Research and healthcare statics support the claim that each move up the healthcare continuum accounts for a 2-5 X cost multiplier. The Phase I results, as well as previous research in this space supports the notions that RHM has implications for policy makers, medical and allied health practitioners. Dissemination of this research is needed for two primary audiences: 1) to policy makers and practitioners to encourage them to promote environments that support and facilitate RHM use by rural seniors as well as their providers of care, and 2) to educators of existing and future rural medical and allied health workforces to the potential of RHM.As the dispersion of technology continues to extend deeper into rural areas, employment opportunities may expand in the areas of technical support into these areas as well. RHM's benefits will become more obvious as healthcare professionals explore creative approaches to addressing the distinctive health obstacles of seniors residing in geographically isolated regions.
Animal Health Component
30%
Research Effort Categories
Basic
20%
Applied
30%
Developmental
50%
Goals / Objectives
Goal 1: Prepare the Rural Health Mate system for transition to commercialization phase.This major goal will ensure that the fruit of this effort results in a game-changing methodology that will improve the health outcomes of rural seniors.Building on the success of Phase I, Phase II efforts will include the further design, development, and testing of RHM resulting in a much-needed system to help rural seniors stay healthy, safe and independent. Additional benefits to care providers and caregivers include remote coordination, communication and monitoring of the senior in a respectful way.The overall goal of Phase II is to continue the research and development activities for RHM to provide a fully functioning software system that can be readily commercialized during Phase III. This will be achieved with the following Phase II Technical Objectives:1) Develop Final Requirements for RHM2) Enhance the RHM Design and Prototype based on Phase I feedback3) Perform Extended Field Evaluation4) Develop the Final SoftwareThe sub-tasks for implementing each of these objects are:Objective 1: Develop Final Requirements1.1. Conduct field interviews1.2. Refine user stories and needsObjective 2: Enhance Prototype2.1. Revise design2.2. Develop Caregiver App2.3. Enhance the Cloud Computing2.4. Integrate, build and testObjective 3: Extended Field Evaluation3.1. Subject Selection / Recruitment3.2. Administer Field Evaluation3.3. Analyze ResultsObjective 4: Complete Development4.1. Review design (throughout)4.2. Reduce Build and Install Costs4.3. Enhance Fall Prediction4.4. Develop Install / Usage Material4.5. Final integration, debug and testGoal 2: Perform Socio-Economic Impact Assessment of the Rural Health Mate systemThis goal will be accomplished via the following Objective and sub-tasks:Objective 5: Socio-Economic Impact5.1. Assess Impact5.2. Analyze and Report Results
Project Methods
The Methods that this Rural Health Mate (RHM) project will be conducted include:1) Collection of focus group information using the Nominal Group Technique (NGT), which empowers each focus group participant with a guarantee that their inputs will be recorded and that they will have equal rights when voting on various aspects of the project that are presented, such as the relative importance of features and functions.2) Definition of user stories AKA Use Cases that describe the rural senior's typical current situation, their goals (as well as the goals of their support team and healthcare team), and the resulting gap analysis.3) Further definition of these user stories detailing the ideal typical interaction with the RHM system, broken down by functional assessment or diagnosis (such as COPD, HF, Diabetes, etc.).4) Conversion of these user stores to design specifications, including the formal Design Specification Document (DSD), which is a living document that was started in Phase I and will follow through into production in Phase III.5) Breakdown of the DSD into an implementation plan with assignment of each relative section to the proper team.6) Weekly Team meetings (including all aspects of the project) to review metrics, issues, potential workarounds or fixes, and measurable outcomes to be accomplished by the next week's meeting.7) Interweave the development cycle with the extended evaluation. This is a fundamental departure of the typical process, called waterfall, where a development team works in a vacuum as they convert the functional specifications into a working prototype - and then reveal the final version to the study participants.CreateAbility's process will interlace the extended evaluation of the emerging system with new features and functions as they become available to immediately provide feedback to the design team on how these new capabilities were supportive, helpful, and used.The key milestone events in this project are:Objective 1: Develop Final RequirementsBeg End Tasks1 8 1.1. Conduct field interviews9 12 1.2. Refine user stories and needsObjective 2: Enhance PrototypeBeg End Tasks13 26 2.1. Revise design17 26 2.2. Develop Caregiver App21 26 2.3. Enhance the Cloud Computing31 39 2.4. Integrate, build and testObjective 3: Extended Field EvaluationBeg End Tasks21 26 3.1. Subject Selection / Recruitment27 78 3.2. Administer Field Evaluation40 91 3.3. Analyze ResultsObjective 4: Complete DevelopmentBeg End Tasks40 78 4.1. Review design (throughout)27 39 4.2. Reduce Build and Install Costs40 65 4.3. Enhance Fall Prediction66 91 4.4. Develop Install / Usage Material40 91 4.5. Final integration, debug and testObjective 5: Socio-Economic ImpactBeg End Tasks66 104 5.1. Assess Impact92 104 5.2. Analyze and Report Results