Ottawa-based Vocantas Inc. announced the launch of CallAssure,an interviewing technology system on Monday at the HealthcareInformation and Management Systems Society annual conference in SanDiego, Calif.
CallAssure is a touch-tone and/or speech recognition enabledphone interviewing system that allows health care providers tocontact newly released patients and inquire about their status ormonitor their progress.
The system performs automated outbound calls to a predeterminedlist of patients.
CallAssure was designed with wide spread collaboration withhealth care professionals and is based on research by severalindependent scientists, according to Vocantas.
Some of the key factors in the design and clinical trials werethe ability to use the data obtained during the patient follow-upinterview to highlight adverse events and key quality indicators(i.e., drug interactions, adverse pain, nausea, and poor patientsafety).
Urgent issues are passed to health care professionals forimmediate action and data collected is presented in a manner easilyinterpreted by clinical managers to assist with continuous qualityimprovement.
Quality assurance initiatives proven during trials usingCallAssure have shown an increase in quality of patient carewithout increasing nursing workload, according to the company.
“After many years studying the issues related to post-dischargeadverse events, the health care community approached Vocantas as apartner to couple technology with best practices in an effort toaddress this serious issue,” said Dr. Alan Forster. “CallAssure notonly addresses this issue in an efficient and cost-effective mannerbut enables continuous improvements to patient safety.”
Foster, an author of many reports on post patient dischargeadverse events, has identified CallAssure as an aide in earlydetection of post-discharge adverse events.
Vocantas said they identified the health care industry as readyto adopt this technology and can benefit greatly in terms ofimproving quality of care and reducing administrative and secondarytreatment costs.
“It is truly an honour to work on this very important projectand it is very encouraging to see the health care industrycollaborating with the technology industry,” said Vocantas CEO GaryHannah. “Together we can make a huge impact.”