Personal Health Record (PHR) Service

How do I cancel my Zweena membership?

admin — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 22:09:49 +0000

If you choose not to continue with the free trial please see instructions below on how to opt-out.

Login as usual:

Click on the purple Member “Login” button
Logon to HealthVault
Click the checkbox inside the “Security Image”
Click the “Secure Sign-in” purple button

Go to the “My Health Community” page:

Click the “My Account” tab on the right side of the screen, just below the HealthVault logo
On the My Account page, select the “Current Plan Details” link on the left menu
Scroll down to the bottom of the page.
Review the last section of the page labeled “Opt out”.
Click the white button “Cancel my account” on the right hand side.

MANAGING YOUR HEALTH CARE RECORDS

admin — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 22:34:06 +0000

From SheKnows.com:

GET ORGANIZED

Keep track of each medical provider you see, logging the names and locations of all clinicians along with the dates of medical visits. Record a history of medical providers from as far back as you can remember.

SELECT A METHOD

Decide which tracking method works best for you: A paper journal? A software program? The important thing is to select a method and stick with it for a complete record.

ASK FOR ACCESS

Does your insurance company have a consumer portal? Does your doctor offer you access to your information online? Does your hospital system provide a patient secure web portal? Ask your doctors for copies of your records each time you go for a visit.

BE PREPARED

Take a look at your records prior to your doctor’s appointment. Bring a copy of your medical history to doctor’s visits. Use technology to capture your data and your family’s health information. This is especially important for caregivers and parents of young children, and women often take the lead on managing medical care in these roles. Having the right tools can also encourage men to become active participants in their own care and that of family members.

DELEGATE TO SAVE TIME

Compiling and managing health information is an important but time-consuming task. If you have no time, engage a service to get you started and to keep the records updated.

KEEP YOUR RECORDS CURRENT

Make sure you make necessary changes and add important information by setting reminders to complete periodic updates. Updates can include new doctor’s visits, prescriptions or personal health notes.

STAY INFORMED

Many medical reference sites provide updates to subscribers. Establish an alert system to be informed of new medical recommendations and check for regular updates.

MAKE SURE RECORDS ARE ACCESSIBLE AWAY FROM HOME OR DURING EMERGENCIES

When you’re on the road or dealing with a natural disaster like a hurricane, earthquake or floods, it’s important to make sure you can access your personal health records. Consider an independent web-based solution to maintain access.

GET STARTED SLOWLY

To avoid feeling overwhelmed, break the records compilation task into smaller components. Start with yourself, then add your family members.

BE EMPOWERED

Most people don’t think about their medical records until they’re facing a health issue. At that point, compiling records can seem overwhelming. If you’re prepared ahead of time, you are empowered: Get into the habit of using the information – it’s your health, so take control!

How To Fix The Personal Health Record Mess

admin — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 22:24:05 +0000

So few Americans are interested in creating a digitalized PHR that Google had to close its service. But there are ways to get the public interested.

By Marianne Kolbasuk McGee InformationWeek
September 26, 2011 08:00 AM

How many patients have taken on the project of digitizing their personal health records? My guess is not many. Most people who have bothered to collect and manage their healthcare information are more likely to have a large box somewhere at home stuffed with lab reports, hospital discharge instructions, and receipts for care, but have not bothered to take the next step.

Of course, there are small and large vendors out there who can help. And some health insurers and employers also offer assistance through consortium groups like Dossia. However, a lot that information is derived from claims data, which doesn’t always provide a complete picture of the patient either. Sometimes, the data suggests that blood work was done, for instance, but in fact it was ordered and paid for, but no results exist in the file.

Under the HITECH Act and HIPAA regulations, clinicians are supposed to offer patient copies or electronic access to their medical data, which could be used to populate a PHR. But for the most part, that’s being achieved through patient portals. And while portals can be convenient for patients, unless the individual gets all his or her care from one affiliated group of providers–like a Kaiser Permanente, for example–it’s still unlikely that the patient information will be complete.

So, what are patients to do if they want to create and manage their own complete e-health record? Too often it requires they supplement information already available in PDFs or images of scanned documents with a mish mash of assorted information from paper records. That scattered collection of information then has to be manually entered into the e-PHR. That’s a lot of work. And if the patient is elderly or suffers from a serious illness that’s driving him or her to gather all the information in one place, it may be too much.

[ Which healthcare organizations came out ahead in the IW500 competition? See 10 Healthcare IT Innovators: InformationWeek 500.]

One option is to use the services of a company like Zweena, a tiny Princeton, N.J.-based vendor offering a concierge service that manually tracks down paper-based medical records and inputs key data from those documents into an understandable and manageable digital record.

Over the last five years, Zweena’s small staff, which includes a nurse and medical coding expert, has created digitized healthcare records for about 450 individuals by combing through more than 3,500 pages of medical documents. With the patient’s signed authorization, their team sends requests for medical records to the individual’s doctors. When the patient’s records come in, they “abstract critical information” and enter that data into a new digital record.

The service ranges in price from $50 a year for a basic membership to $495 a year for an “unlimited, premium” plan, that gives members “unfettered access to Zweena staff.” With the premium service, Zweena nurses will answer questions about what a medical term in a record means, or they’ll have records printed out and mailed for someone who’s traveling.

Zweena also has a relationship with Microsoft so that patients’ Zweena records can be “pushed” into Microsoft HealthVault personal health records, “in case” individuals are uneasy about dealing with a small company like Zweena, said founder John Phelan.

Eventually, Zweena wants to allow bi-directional transfers of information between HealthVault and Zweena PHRs, so that patients can easily have digitized data updated into Zweena as more doctors agree to send patient electronic data to HealthVault and other consumer PHR platforms, said Phelan.

“There’s an evolution going on,” Phelan pointed out. “Google Health’s model didn’t work because they were focused on getting millions of eyeballs” for their PHR site, he said. “But it’s really about putting the patient at the center of their information,” and making it easy.

Find out how health IT leaders are dealing with the industry’s pain points, from allowing unfettered patient data access to sharing electronic records. Also in the new, all-digital issue of InformationWeek Healthcare: There needs to be better e-communication between technologists and clinicians. Download the issue now. (Free registration required.)

Zweena Aggregates Your Medical Records For Easy Management

admin — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 21:22:17 +0000

One of the biggest challenges facing consumers when it comes to their health is the ability to manage, consolidate and track their medical history. We all know the drill: every time we change a healthcare provider, we need to somehow reproduce our medical records for the new provider, and yet maintain our privacy – a situation exacerbated by an increasingly mobile population.

But there are new innovators in this space who seek to simplify this. One of the latest is Princeton, New Jersey-based Zweena (www.zweenahealth.com), an online Personal Health Record (PHR) service for consumers to manage and protect their health records. It is essentially a digital medical records aggregator that takes care of everything; from collecting paper records, to translating through the jargon, to securely storing it all online. Customers no longer have to dig through filing cabinets or call up all the doctors they’ve seen over the years. It’s all online, secured, and easy to manage and access.

“I became frustrated with my inability to conveniently create and maintain a digital copy of my medical records,” says Zweena founder John Phelan, who left a 17-year career in the U.S. pharmaceutical industry to start the company in 2006. “I was banking online and brokering online, and yet my health records and the records of my wife, four children and other loved ones were in a dark office on a shelf – difficult to access and inconvenient to share with healthcare providers.”

Leveraging Technology

The current US healthcare system, Phelan says, is a “disaggregated group of silos”. The key problem is that individuals simply do not have a central place to store and maintain their medical records, certainly not in digital format. And if they relocate, change jobs or change insurance, current systems don’t allow access once a member leaves the system. It’s made worse by the fact that most consumers wouldn’t even know where to begin to locate all their historical medical data in the first place. Phelan’s goal was to provide users with a web-based solution to collect, scan and transfer paper records to create a structured data set of their medical history. “Medical records form the overall health picture. Being an empowered medical consumer starts with having access to this vital data,” insists Phelan.

“How do we help individuals – and possibly their families – to become more engaged healthcare consumers? Can’t we use the technology we have available today to help?” asks Phelan. Well, Zweena is his answer.

John Phelan, founder of Zweena.

Up until a few years ago, the attention was predominantly on digitizing records for hospitals and doctors, and – ironically – consumers were left out of the equation. They simply had no access to their own healthcare data. Zweena – which means ‘beautiful’ in Arabic – solves that problem by offering consumers a service that collects and digitizes those records, and allows them, through a web-based application, to securely access and share that information. And since Zweena is effectively non-partisan, access to that information is for life, even if you change jobs or insurance providers. “Access to this data empowers consumers, helps providers make better care decisions and can prevent medical errors,” states Phelan.

But the going is not easy. The key challenges facing Zweena, though, is money and people. “Zweena is seeking first-round financing that will help the company grow and add the right people. We have revenue and a sound business model – we have the basic foundation for solid growth. Creating Zweena brand awareness and growing our client base is the critical next step for us.”

Zweena at Health 2.0 in San Fransisco. September 24 – 27.

admin — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 17:34:37 +0000

Zweena at NJHIMSS annual meeting in Atlantic City.

admin — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 17:33:59 +0000

Zweena® CEO John Phelan Discusses The Structured Health Data Revolution

admin — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 17:20:25 +0000

Zweena® CEO John Phelan Discusses The Structured Health Data Revolution And Its Role In Personal Health Records During 2011 New Jersey Health Information Exchange Summit

Skillman, New Jersey – July 13, 2011 – Zweena®, which powers the leading patient portal for creating and managing a fully digital Personal Health Record (PHR), today announced that Zweena CEO John Phelan will discuss the structured health data revolution and its critical role in personal health records during the 2011 New Jersey Health Information Exchange Summit. Established U.S. standard structured health data formats, such as Continuity of Care Record (CCR) and Continuity of Care Document (CCD), enable health care providers to share and exchange patient health record information more efficiently and improve quality of care. Similarly, converting health records into structured health data for consumer use in PHRs enables consumers to more easily share those records directly with providers for use in clinical care, and provides access to a new array of health tracking and maintenance services.
“With structured health data, your blood pressure, for example, becomes a digital number which can be used to plot multiple measures over time, or offer intelligence based on high or low blood pressure levels,” said John Phelan, CEO of Zweena “As consumers nationally are becoming increasingly engaged in self-care and their own health maintenance, structured health data opens the door to a revolution in self-care and is the critical link that will accelerate consumer PHR adoption in America.”

About Zweena

Zweena® powers the leading Internet-based platform for creating and managing a Personal Health Record (PHR), connecting individuals and their family members to the medical community of doctors and providers they rely on to manage and maintain their health. Partnered with Microsoft HealthVault®, Zweena transforms paper medical records into scanned and organized structured data files, eliminating the complexity of creating and managing a PHR on one’s own. Medical record professionals do all the work assuring consistent accuracy and timely updating. The Zweena Personal Health Record is accurate, current, and can be used in self-care, the care of family members, and shared with healthcare providers via an individual’s secure Personal Health Community (PHC), anywhere in the world. For information on Zweena, visit: www.zweenahealth.com.

The Importance Of Structured Data In Personal Health Records

admin — Tue, 05 Jul 2011 18:40:09 +0000

As an individual, a patient, why should I care about “Structured Data”, and what is it?
To be clear, Structured Data in health care is everything. Or will be everything. Period. End of story.

Today, most of us have medical information on paper, in a manila folder, on a shelf in your doctor’s office. The information is handwritten and unless you ask for a copy, the information just sits there doing nothing, until someone looks at it. Probably not you. You certainly are not looking at it, only because the culture in this country is to separate the patient from their data. This is what we need to change and why “Structured Data” is so important.

Inclusive of digital images, the information contained in everyone’s health record needs to be in structured data format. No handwriting here. Here we are just dealing with “ones” and “zeros”, what is the language of the digital age. So now your blood pressure is a digital number which can harness the power of computing to do many things, like plotting multiple measures over time, or offering intelligence based on high or low levels. The examples are endless and the advantages are what the US Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) is trying so hard to encourage. This consumer engagement in health, being accountable for our information is exciting and daunting.

As individuals, how can we get our medical encounter data converted to structured data? Well, if you go to a doctor who has an Electronic Health Record, your office visit and his notes and orders will be captured electronically into structured data. Same with a clinic or hospital visit. Over the next 10 years, doctors and hospitals will move in this direction. But, chances are that you have no access to this data because you seeing your data has never part of the plan. Until now.

If your doctor/hospital does not have an EHR, then you, the individual are left to fend for yourself, or you need to find someone, a service, that can do this for you. These are your choices.

My company, Zweena (www.zweenahealth.com) exists purely for you, the individual, to collect, organize and create your structured data directly from the health records you have asked us to collect. Much simpler than doing this yourself; believe me, I have tried.

So with the help of Zweena, or not, once the information is in one of the US established standard data medical sets (either CCR or CCD), the opportunities are endless. Sounds easy? Not really. As structured as the data is, getting it there is creating a medical revolution in the US, and around the world is what we will be working toward. Revolutions are exciting and bring change which can be good. We are about making the change happen at ground level. Join us and be part of this change! You will be glad you did.

Zweena® Partners with Virtua® To Offer Free Online Personal Health Records To Consumers

admin — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 16:41:53 +0000

Skillman, New Jersey – June 8, 2011 – Zweena® has partnered with Virtua, the largest comprehensive healthcare system in Southern New Jersey, to offer free online personal health records to consumers living in Gloucester, Camden and Burlington counties in South Jersey. Virtua’s PHR program is intended to empower consumers to take proactive control over their health and more easily manage the health of their family, through a free one year subscription to Zweena for anyone living in Gloucester, Camden, and Burlington counties.

Zweena, a consumer centered digital health company, transforms paper health records to a fully digital, secure online health record that can be used in self-care and the care of family members. “Virtua believes PHRs can play a critical role in enhancing patient health. We want to make Personal Health Record collection as easy as possible to our local community,” said Alfred Campanella, Chief Information Officer for Virtua. “We selected Zweena based on their expertise in digitizing patient health records, and their consumer-friendly patient portal, which makes it easy for a patient to obtain their records and keep vital health information current.”

“Virtua is an innovation leader in health services, rapidly adopting the use of electronic health records in its own business,” said John Phelan, CEO of Zweena. “This partnership is an extension of the organization’s mission to innovate patient care, by empowering local consumers with the ability to better manage and maintain their health through leading-edge technology.”
To take advantage of Virtua’s offer, consumers living in Gloucester, Camden, and Burlington counties can go to www.zweenahealth.com and register for the Free Virtua Offer.

About Virtua

Virtua is a comprehensive multi-hospital healthcare system headquartered in Marlton, NJ. Its mission is to deliver a world-class patient experience through its programs of excellence in cancer treatment, cardiology, orthopaedics, women’s health, pediatrics, surgery, neuroscience and wellness. A non-profit organization, Virtua employs 8,400 clinical and administrative personnel, and approximately 1,800 physicians serve as medical staff members. Virtua has distinguished itself as one of the first Six Sigma organizations in healthcare, as an early adopter of clinical and digital technologies, and for its innovative partnerships with nationally renowned organizations such as GE Healthcare, Fox Chase Cancer Center and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). It has been honored twice with the New Jersey Governor’s award for Clinical Excellence and recognized with the Leadership Award for Outstanding Achievement by Voluntary Hospitals of America. Virtua has been honored as the #1 Best Employer in the Delaware Valley by the Philadelphia Business Journal and is the recipient of the Consumer Choice Awards by National Research Corporation. Virtua is proud to be the official southern New Jersey sponsor of the Go Red for Women and Start! Walking Movements. For more information, visit www.virtua.org or call 1-888-VIRTUA-3.

About Zweena

Zweena® powers the leading Internet-based platform for creating and managing a Personal Health Record (PHR), connecting individuals and their family members to the medical community of doctors and providers they rely on to manage and maintain their health. Partnered with Microsoft HealthVault®, Zweena transforms paper medical records into scanned and organized discreet data files, eliminating the complexity of creating and managing a PHR on one’s own. The Zweena Personal Health Record is accurate, current, and can be used in self-care, the care of family members, and shared with healthcare providers via an individual’s secure Personal Health Community (PHC), anywhere in the world. For information on Zweena, visit: www.zweenahealth.com.

Zweena to Present at NJTC July 21st event

admin — Wed, 25 May 2011 19:39:17 +0000