ForaCare – IoT in Healthcare Case Study

The healthcare industry has consistently been at the forefront of innovation. In fact, within the IoT market, connected healthcare devices will be worth a collective $117 Billion USD by 2020. IoT connectivity is for both huge systems and minuscule sensor technology. Doctors, nurses, and patients are discovering the benefits of connected devices on the front line — ingestible sensors, connected pacemakers, inhalers, and glucose monitors are already established on the market. ForaCare Inc. help patients to manage their medication and scheduling, with voice-guided glucose monitors, Bluetooth testing applications and a sophisticated platform for doctors and patients, combining innovative technologies to complete the cycle of chronic disease management. Using two main counterparts, the Telehealth platform and their full range of connected monitoring devices, ForaCare have created a system that can collate data from several different sources and locations and display this information to both patient and practitioner.

Created with user experience, comfort, and safety in mind, ForaCare’s Test’N Go glucose monitoring meter can communicate directly with the iFora App, allowing patients to see trends in their blood glucose levels, plan their meals, dosages, and get access to the 101 information center 24/7. The device can also transmit data to a computer via Bluetooth connection, store 450 test results on the device, and has a talking feature that guides patients through the testing process step by step, ejecting the testing strip when finished to make disposal as clean as possible. On the professional side, the VSM100 Pro Vital Sign Monitor can measure blood pressure, blood oxygen saturation (SpO2), ear temperature and blood glucose levels all at once. This gives medical professionals a full overview of a patient’s vital signs, in a fraction of the time.  The VSM100 is equipped with a barcode scanner to log both the patient and medical practitioner, and data is immediately transmitted to the Hospital’s EMR (Electronic Medical Record) via a Bluetooth, GPRS, or WiFi connection, increasing recording accuracy from 75% to 97% vs. a traditional paper method. Completing the Telehealth system is the Fora 24/7 HealthView platform, a web-access management system that offers HIPAA secure and unified access to all your internal and cloud-based web applications, with a four-level administration design to support Health Plans or Hospitals. For physicians or caregivers who want to keep track of their patient’s vital signs daily or weekly, ForaCare’s TeleHealth system makes their real-time records instantly and easily accessible.

By connecting devices, patients, and doctors in one accessible place, ForaCare have completed the cycle of chronic disease management and created a self-sustaining system of easy, efficient caregiving.  This system is designed to offer maximum practicability to hospitals and health centers, ultimate ease of use and an all-inclusive range of information, in turn allowing physicians to recommend the system to their patients.  To achieve this level of accessibility, every stage of the process must have a secure and resilient network connection between points, so that data transfer between patients, doctors, and hospital systems is not restricted in any way.

ForaCare found that Pod Group’s flexible data plans and resilient network topology were exactly what the company needed to complete their TeleHealth total health system. By integrating multi-network SIM cards into their professional devices, ForaCare could enable real-time data transfer between hospital systems and their technology, cutting average time checking patients’ vital signs from 12 minutes to just two minutes and enabling a clear path from patient device to professional device, and to the hospital’s medical records. In addition, Pod’s relationships with operators in the US, Canada, and around the world allowed ForaCare to rapidly expand into new markets, keeping the efficiency of their devices at an all-time high while building their business and releasing thousands of new units. Pod Group’s multi-network connectivity allowed ForaCare to expand their business into new regions that they were unable to cover with other providers and gave them an added layer of resilience to ensure the Telehealth system kept its connection at every stage. Pod’s Best Signal Multi-Network SIM automatically connects to the best available signal on device start-up, and can intelligently switch to an alternative network in case of an outage on a network. Adrian Alexander, the Sales Account Manager of ForaCare, praised the efficiency of Pod’s stellar support team, stating ‘Pod gave us a quick response to our troubleshooting process and an excellent level of customer service’.  He continues, ‘Our downstream users have not reported any connectivity issues and that gives us more confidence in the service that Pod provides, and allows us to continue planning our growth.’