October 1st, 2009
Health IT prevents heart attacks?
Kaiser Permanente is pushing a study in today’s American Journal of Managed Care as proof that health IT saves lives.
It proves to me my pill regimen may be keeping me alive.
In the study 68,560 people with diabetes or heart disease were given a combination of generic statins and hypertension drugs, resulting in 1,271 fewer heart attacks and strokes.
But what’s the health IT angle?
- KP HealthConnect, the insurer’s Electronic Health Record system, was used to identify the patients at risk.
- The findings validate a computer-created model predicting that the bundled drugs would cut heart attack and stroke in the target population by 71%.
- Kaiser researchers conducted the study.
The medical case for statins and hypertensives seems more compelling. Some 23 million Americans have diabetes, and heart attack is the chief cause of death in this country. The study shows that a generic drug therapy can cut the costs of those conditions dramatically.
But, more than EHRs, the study also seems to show that getting your blood pressure and your sugar checked, then doing something simple to control both, actually keeps you alive.
My own condition was found in 2000 with a manual blood pressure meter and a simple blood test.
Get yourself checked today.
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist since 1978, and has covered technology since 1982. He launched the Interactive Age Daily, the first daily coverage of the Internet to launch with a magazine, in September 1994. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
Subscribe to ZDNet Healthcare via Email alerts or RSS.
