The MyGlucoHealth system is the brainchild of US firm Entra Health Systems. Based out of San Diego, California, Entra Health have been pursuing a logical extension of telehealth: creating a single robust system that can be used under standard clinical practices, and telehealth, and by the patient, interchangeably.

There are valuable lessons here which need to be considered by everyone else working on medical telehealth, or indeed any form of health provision.

Admittedly MyGlucoHealth, as it sounds, is a diabetes sugar monitoring system, but the base technology upon which it is built, is useful to any number of health aspects.

The system revolves around an extraordinarily adaptable glucose meter. It is powered by BlueTooth, and is perfectly capable of synchronising data with a nearby PC, or any other BlueTooth compatible device, such as an iPhone worn about the person for example. The system can then program the iPhone and PC to talk to one another regularly via a VPN, and can send updates of patient's historical glucose trends, as well as reminders to check glucose or stock up on more strips.

Its in essence the standard web-portal/centralised database that everyone else is using. The VPN aspect is natty and new however, as is the concept that the device takes readings, sends those readings to the nearest authorised device, and then calculates trends in real-time, sending them out to other devices as needed. If it is in the surgery at the time, it'll try and talk to the Doctor's PC. If that is unavailable, it will talk to the patient's phone, then use THAT to try and connect with the PC.

This slight yet powerful innovation is the aspect that we need to see more of. Telehealth devices taking a pro-active roll in ensuring the patient's data gets through.

References

MyGlucoHealth Adds SMS, Email Messaging Capabilities

MyGlucoHealth Adds Patient Messaging and Alerts System to Integrated Diabetes Monitoring Platform