Whole Health Access: A Local Referral Network Platform

描述（由申请人提供）：主流生物医学保健通常成功地治疗了许多病因和机制都很清楚的疾病，但也有许多健康问题，患者寻求补充或替代治疗（顺势疗法，脊椎指压疗法，按摩疗法等），也提供成功，或至少更好的生活质量。此外，根据个体患者的价值观和目标，更好的生活质量可能是更好的治疗结果衡量标准，例如，肿瘤消退伴随着主要的治疗副作用。虽然文化和社区对补充和替代医学（CAM）的价值有明确的认可，但满足社区卫生保健需求的一个主要障碍是，主流卫生保健提供者往往不知道当地的补充和替代医学卫生保健提供者可以提供可能更好地满足某些客户健康问题的治疗方法。因此，虽然某一社区可能有许多保健选择，但在将患有不同类型健康问题的人与具有提供适当和最佳治疗的专门知识的提供者进行匹配和转介方面存在问题。为了解决这一问题，具有创新精神的个人和团体正在努力发展跨各种医疗方法的组织，以便在提供者一级整合所有保健选择，同时提高对辅助医疗方法的认识和认识。这个SBIR项目建议开发软件来协助这个集成过程。可以帮助这种集成的组件信息操作有：1)识别和分类患者的医疗保健问题和治疗需求；2)将这些问题和需求与护理提供者相匹配；3)将患者转介给医护人员；4)长期跟踪和监测结果；5)患者教育和风险监测。总体目标是创建一个软件系统，支持各种医疗保健流程和选择的集成。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Mainstream biomedical health care has been generally successful in treating a number of disorders with well-understood etiologies and mechanisms, but there are many health problems for which patients seek complementary or alternative treatments (homeopathy, chiropractics, massage therapy, etc.) that also offer success, or at least better quality of life. Furthermore, depending upon individual patient's values and goals, better quality of life can be a better outcome measure for treatment than, for example, tumor regression accompanied by major treatment side effects. While there is clear cultural and community validation of the value of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), a major barrier to meeting community health care needs is that mainstream health care providers are often not aware of local CAM health care providers who can provide treatment methods that might better match some of their clients' health problems. Thus, while many health care options are potentially available in a given community, there is a problem in matching and referring people with different kinds of health problems to the providers with the expertise to provide the appropriate and optimal treatments. To solve this problem, innovative people and groups are working to develop organization across diverse medical treatment methods in order to integrate all health care options at the provider level, at the same time increasing awareness and recognition of CAM methods. This SBIR project proposes to develop software to assist in this integration process. The component information operations that can help this integration are: 1) identifying and classifying patients' health care problems and treatment needs; 2) matching those problems and needs to care providers; 3) referring the patients to the providers; 4) tracking and monitoring outcomes over time; and 5) patient education and risk monitoring. The overall goal is to create a software system that supports the integration of diverse health care processes and options.