For Todd Stivland, MD, owner and CEO of Bluestone Solutions and provider of onsite medical care for assisted living facility (ALF) residents, technology has become pretty much a way of life.
A family physician for 19 years, Stivland oversaw clinical tool development and implementation of a Duluth clinic’s electronic health records, directed the creation of custom software for onsite care models, and serves on Minnesota state policy committees.
In 2012, Stivland founded Bluestone, now the largest provider of onsite coordinated care and advanced care coordination for complex patients in Minnesota.
“From what we’re seeing, the biggest trend [in assisted living] is ALFs are becoming much more of a medical model than they used to be,” says Stivland. “They’re caring for some of the sickest people in the community. There’s not much difference between assisted living and skilled nursing anymore in their complexity. That’s forced assisted living to be more aggressive about their medical model. There’s really been a big push to make the medical model more balanced.”
That’s true of health care in general, and in keeping with the whole health care sector, assisted living is seeing “a boom in technology,” Stivland says.
Of course, not all ALFs have embraced this trend yet, he says. “We have customers who don’t even have Internet in the building, and others who’ve installed very advanced systems.”
Necessity Again Proves The Mother Of Invention
One of the biggest issues in health care—one that technology has the power to solve—is the difficulty in coordinating care, Stivland says.
“We have multiple organizations providing care on different [computer] systems, so getting people able to communicate with each other is a big issue.”
It was such a problem, in fact, that Stivland created technology that reconciles all of these different data sources on its varying computer systems and streamlines the process of providing the data to all the parties involved.
“All of the faxes and phone calls were killing us—they’re so inefficient and time consuming,” he says.
“We’ve created a system where anybody involved in the care system can communicate with each other.” The system handles everything from patient monitoring to getting prescriptions filled and follow-up arranged.
“For instance, say the nurse at the ALF goes to see a resident and finds he has a bladder infection,” says Stivland. “She would send the information to us—the symptoms and that she wants a urine test.” The Bluestone doctor receives the information on a smart phone that’s kept near at all times; reviews the information; and, if a test is warranted, sends an electronic order to the lab.
“The lab goes out to draw blood for the test. The results come back to us, and we send them to the nurse. We then order the antibiotic.” If the family chose to be informed of health-related activities, Bluestone sends a note to the family saying the loved one has a bladder infection, specifies the manner in which it’s being treated, and asks if they have any questions. If they do, the doctors at Bluestone answer them.
The system, Stivland says, “keeps everybody in the loop and allows us to treat people very quickly. We turn orders around a lot of times within minutes; always within two hours.”
Bluestone now provides easily accessed physician services to 4,000 patients, 180 ALFs, and more than 100 home care agencies. Even without any marketing, Bluestone has sold the system to four other local practices, and others are considering a purchase.
The system was developed over eight years in close consultation with technology companies that make assisted living-specific software. The effort required a $2 million investment.
“We were just doctors who couldn’t keep up with the phone calls [and developed the system] out of necessity,” Stivland says. “We never intended to sell it, but other people saw it and wanted it.”
The needs of the elderly are inspiring more than just Stivland.
Tech Innovations Fostered
The first Aging 2.0 Global Innovation Summit was held in San Francisco in mid-May and brought a select group of technology innovators together with investors and seniors housing providers.
The Aging 2.0 summit was organized by Generator Ventures, founded by Katy Fike, a 35-year-old gerontologist and former investment banker, and Stephen Johnston, a 2002 Harvard Business School
graduate.
Generator Ventures’ other program, called Aging 2.0 Generator, takes a few hand-picked technology innovators and works with them for six months to help them develop their ideas into companies with marketable products.
The six-month effort is housed in a senior center—the Bay Area nonprofit Institute on Aging, which provides services for thousands of seniors every year. That gives innovators unique research opportunities as they develop their products.
The Generator program also provides customized curriculum designed and delivered by industry leaders and facilitates the innovators connecting with investors, distributors, senior care providers, and press. The program culminated with the Aging 2.0 summit, which was also attended by 30 new innovators hoping to get into the next Generator program.
The Aging 2.0 Innovators
Among those 11 select companies and products developed through Generator and featured at the summit were:
■ Pixie Scientific. Pixie is developing patches that can be put on the outside of a senior’s diaper. When the diaper is soiled and removed, the caregiver can scan the patch and upload information about the senior’s health condition, such as indicators that a urinary tract infection is developing or the senior is dehydrated.
■ Life2. This company is developing a database and program based on predictive analytics that aim to predict which residents are likely to develop specific health issues, such as pulmonary problems. The information would alert staff to keep an eye out for a list of early warning signs and tell them why the resident is at heightened risk. The program would also provide information on what can be done to mitigate the risk.
■ Jibo. This company hired a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor to help develop “emotional robotics.” The goal is to develop a robot that a senior can interact with and that will appear to respond with human-like emotions to the senior. The robot would act both as a companion (assisting with crossword puzzles, for example, or helping the senior use the Internet to connect with family members) as well as an entity that provides services like medication reminders and diet and exercise monitoring. The idea is to provide this technology for about the cost of a laptop computer.
■ Lift Hero. This is a service that allows seniors to request a ride via the Internet or phone. Drivers, who are prescreened, off-duty EMTs and other medical professionals, pick up the seniors, drive them to their locations, assist them inside, and then return them to their homes and help them get situated there again. Rides can be ordered when needed or be pre-booked. Standing arrangements may also be made.
■ Lively. This is a system of activity sensors that wirelessly transmit information about a senior’s activities to a Web-based app that a family member can check regularly to make sure the senior is up and about and engaging in his or her routine activities.
Other Brilliant Tech Ideas
Stanford University, in collaboration with Aging 2.0, issued a design challenge from its Stanford Center on Longevity last year with the goal of identifying students around the world with great technology-based ideas useful to seniors, and to help students refine those ideas.
Among the finalists was Ritika Mathur from the Copenhagen Institute of Design. Mathur’s idea, called Memory Maps, would combine a device with a radio frequency identification reader with a map of the senior’s neighborhood and global positioning satellite technology. The device would be used by someone with early-stage dementia or other cognitive problems. It would allow the senior and his or her family to actually record memories associated with the map and “pin” them to map locations.
Another finalist was Huabin Kok from Singapore National University whose idea is called Taste+. This is a spoon with electrical stimulation that would be used by someone whose taste sensations have been diminished (common with dementia).
By tapping a button on the spoon, the device provides a simulated salty or sour flavor when the user puts the spoon (and the food on it) into his or her mouth.