Anoto, creator of the digital pen and paper technology, today announces that its partner Longhand Data Ltd has acquired TELER, a company specialising in scientific measurement of healthcare outcomes. Following the acquisition, Longhand Data has integrated TELER with its digital pen and paper technology solution, to produce a real-time, online electronic patient record system which now allows clinicians to record and track patient measured outcomes in a range of healthcare disciplines. The system is driven by data collected using digital pen and paper.
Through the addition of TELER, Longhand Data offers its customers an all-encompassing solution that presents and tracks patient care-plans, monitoring patient recovery and progress through the plan, as well as analysing the data that has been recorded for each patient in real time. The TELER system allows for clinicians to monitor patient remotely and track the effectiveness of prescribed treatments. Using data collected at each treatment episode the TELER algorithms calculate a range of outcome indices, like the Treatment Effective Index which provides for clinicians and healthcare workers robust evidence of clinical change: robust with clinical and statistical significance.
"Patients and their respective symptoms are always individual. TELER is being used to individually measure patients' level of change, either as an improvement or as deterioration and to link change directly to the treatment being delivered," explains Longhand Data managing director, Roger Young. "We have re-written TELER completely from the ground-up to make it available as a web based service so that clinicians can track their patients' progress in real time, view analysis of treatments and assist in patient case reviews remotely. By incorporating digital pen and paper technologies from Anoto to automatically update TELER, using forms completed by either patient or clinician, we provide a solution that offers immediate visibility of a patient's condition and progress."
A range of alternative uses is possible when combining the solutions of digital pen and paper and TELER patient measurement. In one version Longhand TELER will be used as a patient referral system: in which community care teams can use TELER in a tele-medicine format. For example, Longhand Data is delivering a tele-medicine wound referral service for residential care homes and Community Nurses seeking advice from acute care specialists. In this format TELER allows referring nurses to attach photographs of wounds to wound assessment forms, all linked within TELER. Longhand Data is leading the way in care in the community initiatives. It provides an encompassing solution that help hospitals reduce costs as patients can be treated in the comfort of their own home and improve the quality of care; doctors and clinicians able to receive data in real time, analyse it, comment on it, and if necessary intervene to assist community clinicians if that is the best course of action for the patient.
In another format, TELER can be used to equip patients living at home. Using simple forms and the everyday language required by the TELER measuring system clinicians can monitor real-time patient recorded outcomes.
"We have completed a substantive trial of each of these formats and the results are very encouraging from the perspective of both improved patient outcomes and of NHS cost savings. From a recording point of view the TELER process is simple for both clinicians and patients, since pen and paper is familiar, non-technical and cheaper than using laptops or PCs," says Roger Young, director, Longhand Data Ltd.
"To see that digital pen and paper technologies can be integrated into systems like TELER is fantastic news to the healthcare industry," says Anoto executive vice president of sales and marketing, Joakim Nydemark. "We are delighted by the progress and the work Longhand Data has done with combining the solutions together and the real world benefits the system can deliver. Whilst it has the potential to save money to hospitals, it doesn’t take away from patient care, but improves it."
About Anoto Group
Anoto Group is the company behind and world leading in the unique technology for digital pen and paper, which enables fast and reliable transmission of handwritten text into a digital format. Anoto operates through a global partner network that focuses on user-friendly solutions for efficient capture, transmission and storage of data within different business segments, e.g. healthcare, bank and finance, transport and logistics and education. The Anoto Group has around 100 employees and is headquartered in Lund (Sweden). The company also has offices in Guildford and Wetherby (UK), Boston (US) and Tokyo (Japan). The Anoto share is traded on the Small Cap list of NASDAQ OMX Stockholm under the ticker ANOT.
About Longhand Data
Longhand Data Ltd are experts in understanding data collection processes and how they can be made more efficient using digital pen and paper technology, saving time and money. Longhand has over eight years experience in digital paper. Since 2006 the company has expanded into healthcare and has delivered digital pen and paper research projects in London, with Kings College London, and in the North of England with Sheffield Primary Care Trust & Bradford Royal Infirmary Teaching Hospital. The company has offices near York (UK) and is a subsidiary of the J T Leavesley Group Ltd of Burton On Trent (UK).