NOMA HILFE – 4myHealth helps

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In countries with high rates of malnutrition and protein deficiency, germs, which usually do not cause disease, can spread rapidly and lead to devastating disfigurement. Noma is one of these diseases. The effects of Noma on infants and young children who no longer breastfeed are particularly severe. These children are unable to develop the appropriate biological defenses and become victims of the disease.

These children are sometimes ostracized from their environment due to their disfigurement and although they are completely healthy after recovering from the disease, they are unable to lead normal lives.

The fact that doctors, who use their time and knowledge, to help these children and give them a normal life is more than admirable. Regular interventions in affected areas in Africa require extensive planning so that the entire team can effectively use the time on site to help as many children as possible.

Two Noma clinics have been set up in Niger and Guinea-Bissau in close cooperation between Hilfsaktion Noma e.V. and Österreichische Nomahilfe, in which local specialists are trained, supported, and educated by intervention teams. Complex reconstructive procedures are performed by doctors from Vienna such as Dr. Harald Kubiena with the support of local doctors.

„An important part of overall treatment success, in addition to the proper preparation of our young patients, is the post-operative care of the children. After the early post-operative phase which focuses on healing, standardized rehabilitation treatment of the jaw over the next few months is essential for optimal results,“ says Dr. Kubiena. The notes and images taken during operation are important for monitoring the progress of a patient over the course of treatment which can sometimes include multiple operations.

Especially for subsequent operations, good documentation of „what has happened so far“ is extremely important.

In autumn 2017, 4myHealth and Dr. Kubiena decided to cooperate in order to digitize the documentation of the clinics in Niger and Guinea-Bissau. Although the IT infrastructure in Guinea-Bissau and Niger is not up to date, there is internet and computers. The doctors themselves have their laptops with them to help out.

4myHealth is currently the most innovative system used in Austria and internationally for the documentation of consultations and has, among other things, an integrated image management system that is simple and very easy to use. Using a smartphone, photos can be transferred immediately to the respective patient file. No cable or memory card is required and this feature is available from anywhere in the world with an adequate internet connection. Since 4myHealth does not require any software and can be operated using only a web browser, mobile use is very easy in areas with older IT infrastructure.

As soon as a patient is digitally captured in 4myHealth (images and information about the person and the operation), this information is available to the entire international NOMA Hilfe Team. Colleagues can view a patient file immediately and there is no need for paper or e-mail communication.

„For us, 4myHealth is like someone switching on a second surgical light where we can see and work better with it,“ says Dr. Kubiena with satisfaction. „We immediately have all the data we need under our control and we don’t want to go back to what it was like before this system,“ adds the surgeon. This system is not just for surgeons but also for anaesthesiologists who are particularly challenged when treating children suffering from Noma.

For 4myHealth, it was clear that they wanted to help and be part of this wonderful initiative. The whole team was enthusiastic from the very start. “It’s a nice feeling to know that we can help with our system and that the entire international NOMA Hilfe team benefits from it. We hope that we will have to create a lot more accounts on 4myHealth so that doctors and assistants have the opportunity to simplify their work,“ says Walter Gries, co-founder of 4myHealth.

4myHealth System was made available to NOMA Hilfe without any restrictions.

„For us and our colleagues on site, 4myHealth is much more than just a telemedical documentation tool – it makes the treatment of our patients even more effective before, during and especially after sometimes complex surgical procedures. It has become an essential pillar in ensuring the overall success of treatment,“ says Dr. Harald Kubiena.

NOMA Hilfe and 4myHealth – a successful partnership of the present and, with regards to all the successfully treated children in the poorest countries of the world, the future.

A doctor is also an entrepreneur

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Take care of the pence and the pounds will take care of themselves!

As a fully trained doctor, you have probably completed one of the longest periods of studying possible. In Austria, medical school lasts at least 12 semesters and is already the longest university degree offered in the country. This is followed up by regular and/or specialist training. Only then – apart from dentists – can you become a doctor with your own practice. And while you’ve singularly focused on medicine, all of a sudden, you need to become an entrepreneur when you open your own practice.

New topics that you’ve had little exposure to become important. Knowledge of accounting, taxes, calculations, etc. are now necessary and demand a high level of knowledge. Fortunately, there is often helpful in your circle of friends. There are also special advisors who can help you establish your own practice and tax experts who can guide you about starting your business as a sole proprietorship.

So how does 4myHealth help you when you’re just starting your practice but also as it grows? 4myHealth is not just about optimizing your practice’s workflow, it also supports you as an entrepreneur in your business activities. You will have an exact overview of your income on an ongoing basis. If payments from patients are overdue, you can simply send them a reminder or a warning in the event of a further delay. In general, you can export all your transactions and send them to your tax accountant for processing or upload them directly to your accounting software. You can also manage your cash income and expenses in your own cash book and make this available to your accounting department as part of your monthly financial statements.

We have developed our software with doctors and entrepreneurs for doctors as entrepreneurs. Want to learn more about other helpful features? We look forward to hearing from you!

Digital medical history in the waiting room

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Digitization is already an ongoing part of our everyday lives. We use our smartphone all the time. We check the news, chat, look at photos, and surf the web with our small devices or tablets. We are familiar with using these devices and even the “older generation“ can make very good use of them.

In many patient waiting rooms, the collection of patient information and answers to doctor’s questions (medical history) is carried out on printed forms. All information is then manually transferred to a patient management system. The effort involved, in addition to the many other activities, is not insignificant for the assistants or in a practice where there’s only one physician. Also, patient information is often not transferred into the system by the time of the consultation. During the transfer, errors such as typos can easily occur and because of the General Data Protection Regulation, another form has been added that must be submitted, saved, and associated with the patient.

A simple solution is to use a tablet (e.g. Apple iPad) to digitally collect all the data required by the physician. In a combined questionnaire, all information is recorded directly in the tablet and then automatically transferred into the patient management system. The GDPR form with the required declarations of consent by the patient can also be submitted electronically on the tablet. Now, it is important to have a smart solution that directly interacts with the patient management system: new medical history questions for patients who are already in the system or the automatic sending of email and SMS confirmations, newsletter subscriptions or unsubscriptions; switch these notifications on or off inside the system.

It is possible that patients who cannot reasonably be expected to use a tablet may have to choose the previous method or may require initial support from the receptionist. However, some doctors also record the medical history of the patient during the consultation.

No matter which way the doctor and the organization choose, the time savings with a tablet are high due to the elimination of double data entry work and the avoidance of errors. With the support of a medical history questionnaire in several languages, another part of digitization becomes an advantage.

Many 4myHealth customers have already been using a tablet to capture medical histories for several years. Tablets from different manufacturers can be used. The use of multiple tablets at the same time for larger practices is also not a problem. The capture of medical history by different doctors can also be carried out using one tablet in larger group medical practices. The patient simply chooses his doctor, fills in all the fields, and can also draw directly on the tablet if this is important for the medical history. Finally, the medical history form can be signed directly on the tablet and transferred to the 4myHealth patient management system in real time.

No more copying, correcting and delayed completion of patient records after the consultation. With a tablet in the waiting room, workflows become simpler, cheaper and more effective.

How cloud-based solutions can make work easier

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You’ve probably already heard or read a lot about the cloud. It’s often daunting to think about where our data is stored even though we’re using cloud applications on a daily basis. Every time our smartphone is switched on, countless cloud services become active. We are happy to take advantage of the many benefits: no data backup and no need to worry about how to connect the application to check the weather or the news. You might be surprised to know that a chat app using a so-called messaging service is a cloud application!

The cloud hasn’t arrived in many medical practices yet.

You probably already have a patient management software in your practice that can probably manage appointments, patients, and billing. It’s probably installed on a Windows or an Apple computer and there’s another device such as a server somewhere in your office. You probably have to back up your data every day and make sure that this device is always on. You probably have to constantly install updates and protect yourself against viruses and other risks. What do you do if there are fire, a flood, a burglary, or your server or storage device overheats containing all your important data?

In the 1990s and 2000s, software technology was used to program applications that had to be installed on local PCs or laptops. We all know these programs (MS-DOS is still known to many). The program had to be started on the PC, it then fetched the data from the local server in medical practice and saved the new data in the same place. Everything that remained in the office was considered safe and stable.

So what are the disadvantages now and why should you change your current system?

The advantages are obvious. Your data is always accessible from anywhere and from any device. It is safe and you don’t need to incur additional costs by hiring your own IT technicians. It is now possible to run a program without any software installation that can do everything the old one could do. You no longer need to be interested in which Windows version or which server with how much memory and CPU power. It is no longer even relevant where you are, whether you’re in the office in Innsbruck or Graz or even somewhere abroad. Why should you invest in computers that sit somewhere in the office, which is probably not GDPR compliant, and has an IT technician come every few months to update something? Who is actually interested in IT technical details when you can get a simple and stable service which is available everywhere?

Welcome to the cloud application for medical practices!

Take care of your patients and let yourself be supported by a service and not by complex IT. Access your data 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, worldwide, securely and without any software installation, ongoing data backups, and program crashes. Work at multiple locations in your practice and share information with colleagues or employees in real time. Use new technologies to give your patients the service they deserve.

Encrypted data storage, ongoing data backups, protection against power failure, water, fire, theft, and unauthorized access coupled with scalable performance – this is only possible with a cloud solution in a certified data center and 4myHealth offers this to all customers.

Software installation was yesterday – service is today!

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