Patients today spend hours in hospitals connected to medical devices that monitor their health conditions. These devices may not be interconnected and may use different EHR to record data. Extracting a comprehensive record about his/her health condition from various vendors is a mammoth task for patients. There is also the more critical issue of ‘data blocking,’ that is hospitals or systems blocking the information being shared. The ‘blocking’ occurs mainly due lack of technology, for example, data sharing between same EHR is seamless but between two different EHR systems, it becomes complicated and sometimes even impossible. This is ‘a matter of life and death’ in critical conditions. Enter PPX-TEC a healthcare information management platform that helps to move data over various platforms.
Founded by Debra Griffin, a healthcare veteran, PPX-TEC’s mission is to empower the patients with complete control of their medical data. “I believe that all patients should share in the ownership of their records in a simple and practical manner” Griffin explains the philosophy behind PPX. With over 30 years of experience in the medical industry, Griffin has first-handily witnessed challenges in data integration for sharing in the ownership of ones health data. PPX is a standalone mobile solution with a unique Share Menu including Bluetooth to share the data. “PPX is a non-threatening patient engagement opportunity platform to send and receive health and insurance data between patients and providers across the health care delivery system” explains Griffin. PPX can connect with various platforms, software, and medical devices and offers a high degree of data interoperability. PPX is designed to aggregates data from multiple platforms into a single document. The data shared through PPX is embedded and fully secured. No other devices even if they are in the vicinity will not be able to access the data. The data is transmitted from vendors device to the patient’s smartphone through an 8-digit code in proximity. PPX’s mobile application works like a bridge that don’t store any data, and the data remains with the provider and patient. PPX is also FHIR and HL7 compliant.
PPX’s solution encompasses two parts, an app downloaded on to the patient’s smartphone (available with both android and ios) and a software installed or encoded on to the healthcare providers medical device. The patient can access the data from healthcare providers using Bluetooth in proximity. This is particularly helpful in rural areas where internet connection might not be stable. PPX can also send the reports that are not available at the time of appointment via email which is HIPPA Compliant. Other than email and Bluetooth PPX also move data with Share Screen through Print, Import, and Export. PPX also has a Host App (currently hosting a website) which helps other mHealth Apps to share as PPX and exchanges health and insurance data beyond the Internet portal and silos. PPX outputs via PDF, Numbers, HTML, XML, CSV. The solution is Cloud ready, fully scalable, ingests multiple large structured datasets and identifies and manages the relationship between disparate datasets.
Not having patient’s complete health record is a significant challenge for doctors in diagnosing and deciding the treatment. With PPX, all the files are available in the patient’s device and could be used by doctors. “More than often, patients have problems articulating the medical history to doctors, which makes diagnosing difficult. Relaying the information through reports eliminate the problem” says Griffin. PPX equips the patients to create a comprehensive health record and history by sending and receiving data from multiple providers over multiple visits over time. Other than healthcare providers, patients can share this data with insurance companies and social services platforms. The transparency in data sharing is a win-win situation as it also allows insurance companies to detect and fight fraud.
Griffin, a two-time cancer survivor herself, understands how effective data integration can save lives and reduce the cost of healthcare. Her efforts are starting to get noticed in the industry. More and more healthcare providers are turning to PPX for effective data integration. With a lot of exciting stuff getting ready under the hood, PPX plans to revolutionize the way medical data is shared in the US and around the globe.
