Whole Health Access: A Local Referral Network Platform

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.