Pfizer Health Solutions Launches InformaCare

Pfizer Health Solutions Inc (PHS), the clinical informatics subsidiary of Pfizer Inc., has launched an advanced secure Internet-based disease management software package designed to enhance communications between US patients and healthcare professionals.

The new system, called InformaCare, provides individualised treatment recommendations delivered over the Internet to help hospital and physician organisations better manage the care of patients with select chronic diseases.

According to PHS, InformaCare enables patients to more effectively manage their own care, by providing them with evidence-based clinical guidance from PHS’ award-winning Clinical Management System software.

The software provides and Internet-based hub connecting healthcare practitioners, patients, care managers, and administrators. This hub and spoke approach allows patients to become more directly involved managing their care and care managers to more effectively manage resources.

In addition to empowering patients, InformaCare can also use patient-entered information to provide automatic alerts and reminders to care managers about the health status of individual patients. Treatment recommendations included in the program are said to be consistent with established clinical guidelines and implemented under the supervision of patients’ physicians.

Nancy Steele, vice president of PHS said InformaCare gives patients a long overdue enhanced role in their treatment. "We believe in the importance of directly involving patients in their care management process because the greater their involvement, the greater their understanding, and the more likely it is they will fully comply with treatment guidelines and plans".

The system divides patients with chronic disease into manageable risk categories, making it possible for care managers to manage individual patients and ensure that patients at a lower-risk a developing diseases or disease-specific complications receive targeted health information and education from the InformaCare database, while higher-risk patients are enrolled into disease-specific modules that are tailored for closer monitoring.

"We found InformaCare to house all the tools and information that we needed to better take care of patients with certain chronic diseases," said Michael Matthews, CEO of CenVaNet, a community-based healthcare provider network in Virginia which has acted as a test centre for the system.

Matthews added: "We believe this product is going to help us improve the quality and standard of care across a large service population and prove that coordinated care is not only possible, but an effective way to practice clinically and fiscally responsible medicine". .