ADDRESSING THE HEALTHCARE NEEDS OF
OUR AGING POPULATION WITH TECHNOLOGY

Approved by the IEEE-USA
Board of Directors (11 Nov. 2005)

IEEE-USA believes efficient use of technology can help address the healthcare needs of our aging population. Appropriate adoption of existing and emerging technology can improve the efficiency and quality of healthcare delivery, lower costs and, perhaps most importantly, improve the quality of life for our aging population. Specifically, IEEE-USA recommends that:

The federal government should provide new incentives to encourage physicians and other healthcare professionals to specialize in geriatric care, and receive training in utilizing information, communication and remote sensing technologies to facilitate treatment of our aging population. These incentives should include financial inducements, educational grants and regulatory changes.

• Medical information technologies and enhanced communication capabilities be incorporated into patient care

• Remote sensing and adoption of home self-care management programs be utilized to promote efficient and effective patient management between office visits

• Communication standards be adopted to facilitate effective communication and information sharing by converging technologies and devices

• The National Health Information Network be designed to address the specific medical information needs of our aging population

These needs include home healthcare provider access to electronic medical records to both obtain and disseminate health information; patient-centric medical information on long-term management of chronic illness; and communication mechanisms with appropriate response capabilities between healthcare stakeholders and patients based on distributed healthcare in a home-treatment environment.

Our current healthcare system responds most effectively to the acute care needs of a younger, more mobile, population. To meet both the acute and long-term chronic needs of our less mobile, aging population, we need to retune the system. Technology can help us to “age in place” by extending care outward from traditional medical and geriatric treatment facilities. We believe this transformation will need:

• Revision of Medicare reimbursement/payments to promote independent senior living

• Revision of Medicare reimbursement/payments to promote communication aids that allow those receiving home healthcare to be able to connect via IT communication with healthcare providers

• Legislation to support patient autonomy and establish National Advanced Medical Directive guidelines

• Research to document which specific home-health technologies and processes lower healthcare cost and improve the outcome

• Improved training and certification for caregivers using home-health technologies

• Liability support for caregivers utilizing home health technologies

• Utilization of Electronic Medical Records by patients and home-health caregivers to enhance health information exchange between the home-health setting and healthcare professionals

• Extension of the development of health information standards to the exchange of health information between healthcare professionals and home-health caregivers

• Distribution of inexpensive home-health monitoring devices, such as blood pressure monitoring to decrease the incidence of stroke and heart failure in our aging population

• Increasing patient and home-health caregiver education and improving the ease of use of medical devices in the home-care environment

Such techniques as checklists for medical devices, laminated information cards attached to devices, device website assistance, and improved user interfaces should be evaluated for benefit.

• Increased use of home-health telecommunications will enable increased collection of health data. This additional benefit of “aging in place” technology will facilitate the evaluation of the performance of various treatments, including drugs, devices and procedures. Therefore:

• Deployment of home-health technologies should include methodologies to collect, interpret and make modifications based on performance outcomes

• Privacy, security and confidentiality concerns surrounding home-healthcare delivery should be addressed to help build trust between patients and home-health caregivers

• Processes should be established to promote the capability of all health researchers, including public health, to procure home-health data for analysis

• Knowledge gained from this health research should be openly and expeditiously shared with the public.

This statement was developed by IEEE-USA's Medical Technology Policy Committee and represents the considered judgment of a group of U.S. IEEE members with expertise in the subject field. IEEE-USA is an organizational unit of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc., created in 1973 to advance the public good and promote the careers and public policy interests of the more than 220,000 electrical, electronics, and computer engineers who are U.S. members of the IEEE. The positions taken by IEEE-USA do not necessarily reflect the views of IEEE or its other organizational units.

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Last Update:  28 Nov. 2005
Staff Contact: Deborah Rudolph