C.B. inventor says technology tool could save millions on health care

A technology tool that develops patient treatment plans has the potential to save millions in health-care costs, says its Cape Breton inventor.

Corrine McIsaac, president and chief executive officer of Health Outcomes Worldwide, was in Philadelphia earlier this week to attend a mobile health-care conference and promote the how2trak system to potential United States buyers.

"It really poses a wonderful opportunity for us," McIsaac said in an interview while on the trip.

McIsaac was invited to Philadelphia with help from trade representatives at the American consulate office in Halifax.

How2trak is a web-based system designed for use in home-care, acute-care and long-term-care facilities. The New Waterford firm has developed an application for wound care and is working on others for diabetes and blood-stream infections.

Using a laptop or mobile device, a health worker enters a patient’s clinical data. The system generates a treatment plan and issues reminders to help users follow it. Administrators are also able to track the effectiveness and cost of treatment, generate reports and compare their results with provincial and national data.

"I think we’ve really found a great idea to improve patient care, save money and make our health system more sustainable," said McIsaac, a registered nurse.

The nursing professor at the University College of Cape Breton began developing how2track 10 years ago as a manual data collection system. Today, Health Outcomes Worldwide has three full-time and five part-time staff, with two full-time programmers on contract.

The mobile application is now being implemented in Ontario, where most of McIsaac’s 15 clients are based. Most are regional health-care authorities that oversee a number of hospitals, facilities and services.In wound care, the system saves money because it recommends treatment that is more efficient and cost effective than conventional methods, McIsaac said.

"We have one nurse who runs (a report) every morning when she comes in. She can actually see whether her clients are getting the best-practice treatments or not. If they’re not, they don’t fall through the cracks. She gets on the phone, she calls, makes sure they get the right intervention."

McIsaac said wounds are traditionally dressed in gauze and changed every day. But research shows that using different bandaging material and only changing it once or twice a week, depending on the type of wound, helps patients heal faster.

"We teach the nurse the best practice," she said. "We don’t pull these out of the air. It’s from peer-reviewed journals, standards within Canada."

One client, Ontario’s North Simcoe Muskoka Local Health Integration Network, has cut home-care costs by $1.7 million in 10 months by standardizing wound care, McIsaac said. Fifty per cent of the network’s home-care visits involve wound care.

"Every time a nurse goes into the home in Canada, it costs between $60 and $100. If they go in for five minutes or they go in for an hour, that’s the cost. You’re decreasing that."

The network is now implementing the wound-care plan in long-term-care facilities, with acute-care hospitals to follow.

The system cost depends on the client’s size. A home-care agency, for instance, would pay about $45,000 in the first year, including a $25,000 setup fee. The annual cost after that is about $20,000 a year.

McIsaac said the company had $750,000 in revenues last year and hopes to double that in 2011.

While she does have clients in Atlantic Canada, McIsaac hopes to expand the business’s profile in this region, including her home province. Part of the challenge is convincing health-care officials that the system does save money, not reallocate it.

"It doesn’t solve the problems of any of those diseases overnight. It’s a process and it does take about 12 months to start seeing your results. But then we’ve also worked with several other customers that the results have been sustainable for three years."

( jalberstat@herald.ca)