Humetrix to Showcase at HIMSS its Medicare Approved Blue Button 2.0 Mobile Platform for Safer & More Cost-Effective Health Care

Discover iBlueButton 8.0 and its Safety & Cost-Containment Features at the Humetrix Booth 6578

Del Mar, February 8, 2019 - At HIMSS 19 February 11-15 in Orlando, Florida, Humetrix will demo its iBlueButton 8.0 mobile health platform approved by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to help millions of Americans covered by Medicare, Veterans and military personnel in TRICARE receive safer and more cost-effective healthcare.

A year after announcing the Medicare Blue Button 2.0 and MyHealthEData initiative at the HIMSS 18 conference, CMS Administrator, Seema Verma continues to emphasize the importance of “giving patients the necessary information they need to make the best decisions about their health care”. Humetrix, the developer of iBlueButton, a multi-award winner of HHS Blue Button innovation competitions, has embraced this initiative from the start recognizing first and foremost that because Medicare beneficiaries are most at risk for medical errors and redundant tests across multiple providers they need to have access and use of their medical history wherever they receive care.

Every year, between 200,000 and 400,000 Americans die from preventable medical errors and many of these are due to a lack of information at the point of care, leading to diagnostic or therapeutic errors, adverse drug reactions, costly redundant tests and procedures, and preventable hospitalizations. Most of these preventable and life-threatening medical errors affect older Americans who are more likely to be on multiple medications and who suffer from multiple chronic conditions which are too often unknown or partially known given that on average a Medicare beneficiary sees seven different physicians in a year, most of whom don’t have access to their patients’ outside medical records.

This is when a four-year, single payer claim history coming from Medicare and turned - with iBlueButtton 8.0 - into a mobile health record with their up-to-date medical history can become a life-saving tool for information sharing at the point of care, for and by a digitally-empowered patient. For the 38 million Americans enrolled in fee-for-service Medicare, their iBlueButton medical history comes complete with detailed outpatient and inpatient services, diagnoses and medications (for those who also have Part D coverage). However, for today’s 21 million Medicare Advantage (MA) enrollees, Medicare Blue Button claim data are limited to medications and most hospitalizations. When MA plans adopt Blue Button 2.0 standards (with claim data transformed into HL7 FHIR resources made available to third party apps by truly open APIs), enrollees of these plans – many of whom switch plans and move in and out of original Medicare coverage – will then benefit from having their longitudinal medical history in their hands with the use of the Medicare approved Blue Button application of their choice such as iBlueButton 8.0.

A consumer life and cost saving digital health tool, iBlueButton 8.0 was introduced at the White House Blue Button 2.0 Conference in August 2018 to illustrate how CMS approved applications powered by the Medicare Blue Button claim database can help millions of Americans in the Medicare program better manage their often complex and at times error-prone healthcare. iBlueButton is the first native mobile platform approved by Medicare for its new Blue Button 2.0 program, which now counts several approved applications soon to be published by CMS on the Medicare website. In anticipation of this important upcoming publication on MyMedicare.gov, Humetrix publicly released in January its iBlueButton 8.0 on both the Apple and Google Play stores.

The Humetrix physicians and technologists designed iBlueButton with absolutely one goal in mind: giving healthcare consumers, starting with those at higher risk for medical errors and suboptimum healthcare, such as older Americans in Medicare, TRICARE, Veterans, or individuals in Medicaid State programs the information they need to know to avoid preventable medical errors such as drug-drug interactions, misuse of opioids and to receive high quality medical care for specific medical conditions.

With its unique “privacy by design” architecture, iBlueButton doesn’t store any user personal health information in the cloud, but only on the user’s mobile device locally generating in real time personalized notifications and safety warnings, under the user’s total control. iBlueButton 8.0 alerts and safety notifications are based on the user’s medical history and are immediately generated upon changes to the user’s medical information.

These alerts inform iBlueButton users of the potentially addicting opioid drug they have just been prescribed, of a dangerous drug-drug interaction their prescribing physicians didn’t know about or informs them of the standard of care for common chronic conditions. One out of three Medicare patients are prescribed opioid medications, usually without their knowing that these can be even more deadly when combined with other drugs (such as sleeping pills) often prescribed to older Americans which also impair cognition and alertness.

As a result, many preventable hospitalizations and medical errors are due to adverse drug events. By informing the patients themselves of the risks of certain medications taken alone or in combination with others and encouraging them to bring these to the attention of their physicians, iBlueButton provides a powerful tool to help ensure that patients receive safer care.

“With strong industry participation, the CMS Blue Button 2.0 program is a critically important Public Health program to deliver at a large population scale the benefits of innovative technology in the hands of patients who need it the most. With other developers who embraced the program, we at Humetrix are looking forward to have CMS let millions of Americans on Medicare, their family caregivers and their providers know about these Medicare Blue Button 2.0 applications to immediately help millions of Americans receive safer care” says Bettina Experton, MD, MPH, Humetrix President & CEO.

About Humetrix
Humetrix has pioneered the development of innovative consumer-centered mobile health platforms over the past 15 years, which have been deployed around the world. In the US, Humetrix is located in Del Mar, California, with a subsidiary in the UK headquartered in London.

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Twitter: @Humetrix, #Humetrix

Media Contact
Adrien Cirou - Tel: +1.858.449.1056 – Mail: acirou@humetrix.com