ICW selected for US telehealth programme

German e-health specialist InterComponentWare (ICW) has been selected by US health network Coventry Health Care to provide the infrastructure for a home monitoring programme.

ICW will provide the interoperability platform and infrastructure technology for Coventry Health’s telemonitoring pilot program.

The German company is already involved in two large-scale European telehealth projects, including AOK Plus, a health plan-driven telemedicine project for serious congestive heart failure (CHF) patients in the German state of Saxony.

The telehealth pilot being run by Coventry features the deployment of home health medical devices to CHF patients, along with care management services and patient data exchange for the physicians.

The program is intended to improve patient outcomes by centralising specialised, intense case management for chronically ill patients. Studies have shown that telemonitoring of CHF patients increases the patient’s quality of life and can reduce care delivery costs by avoiding unnecessary A&E departments attendances and emergency admissions.

ICW will supply its Device Connectivity Solution as the means to manage and securely distribute information to and from the medical devices in the patient’s home.

The company will also supply its Professional Exchange Server to enable Coventry Health to securely exchange information between disparate systems both inside and outside of the Coventry umbrella of healthcare services.

Dr Vishu Jhaveri, executive vice president and chief medical officer for Coventry Health Care, and executive sponsor for the program, said: "We hope to develop specialised intense care management methodologies that bring proven results to patients, providers and health plans. We can’t accomplish these goals without exceptional technology.”

Jeremy Coote, CEO of InterComponentWare, said: "The alignment of patient, provider and case manager is greatly improved by a truly interoperable technology platform capable of sharing data from a multitude of source systems."