The digital tool will allow health care providers in remote communities to connect with specialists.<\/p>\n
KENORA \u2014 Someone loses a limb to diabetic wound complications every four hours in Ontario.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“And 85 per cent of those are estimated to be preventable,\u201d said Micayla Harland, the project manager for lower limb preservation at Kenora\u2019s Waasegiizhig Nanaandawe’iyewigamig (WNHAC) clinic.<\/p>\n
In the north, that percentage is\u00a0significantly higher.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe problem really can be distilled down to health inequity, but to further elaborate on that, diabetic wound complications that lead to amputation which could have been prevented really, truly disproportionately affects those residing in Northwestern Ontario,\u201d said Harland.<\/p>\n
Indigenous populations in Northwestern Ontario experience rates seven times higher than the provincial average, according to Harland.<\/p>\n
In order to tackle these numbers, WNHAC is starting to use a digital tool called Pixalere that allows general health-care providers in remote communities to connect with specialists.<\/p>\n
\u201cFolks that are at risk for an amputation, and that\u2019s basically anybody with diabetes or vascular disease is at risk for an amputation at some point in their life, would enter into this pathway,\u201d said Harland.<\/p>\n
Assessments are entered into the tool, where the information and photo of the wound are analyzed. Then, the non-specialists are able to access recommendations from specialists.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen our nurse practitioners, community health nurses, foot-care nurses go out to the community, they would have this tool \u2026\u00a0and they would do their charting directly into this tool, and it assists them in determining the best plan of care,\u201d she continued.<\/p>\n
It also allows them to remotely monitor wounds that are uploaded into the software.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a specialist on the other end of it \u2026\u00a0who kind of does remote rounds,\u201d Harland said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, they\u2019re monitoring all active wounds and making sure that they\u2019re following the trajectory that we would expect them to, and when they\u2019re not, they can intervene pretty quickly and say that we need to update this plan of care.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harland told Newswatch that, so far, the collaboration has been \u201cincredibly productive.\u201d The custom version they are working on\u00a0is expected to roll out this fall.<\/p>\n
While the goal is to reduce health inequity \u2014 and avoid amputations \u2014 Harland said, the software will also improve the experience of clinicians\u00a0and save money for the health care system.<\/p>\n
According to the Canadian Institute for Health Information, each lower-limb amputation costs the province\u2019s health-care system at least $45,000. “This software is less than the cost of a single amputation to the province, and has the potential to bring down that rate,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The digital tool will allow health care providers in remote communities to connect with specialists. KENORA \u2014 Someone…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":741670,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[49,48,84,392],"class_list":["post-741669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-health","tag-healthcare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/741669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=741669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/741669\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/741670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=741669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=741669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=741669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}