Humana Cares and Trapollo LLC Collaborate for Major Telehealth Deployment to 1600 Humana Subscribers

By Calvin Azuri
TMCnet Contributor

Trapollo LLC recently announced that it had collaborated with Humana Cares to finish the last in-home installation for one of the biggest Telehealth “pilot” projects in the nation. Trapollo, a global provider of healthcare technology services, successfully implemented and tested more than 1600 interactive remote monitoring devices spread all across the nation in order to monitor Humana Medicare members who are battling congestive heart failure (CHF).

In a release, Todd Leto, founder and CEO of Trapollo said, “It is great working with Humana Cares and we applaud them for employing advanced Telehealth technologies to help their members with CHF live better, healthier, and more productive lives. Our already stressed health system needs to find new and innovative ways to provide people with chronic illnesses high quality and cost effective healthcare alternatives. A video-enabled, in-home remote health monitoring device is being used in the Humana Cares program and it is proving to be an innovative solution with the potential to significantly improve the quality of life for people living with chronic illnesses.”

The in-home devices allow registered nurses to closely monitor the patients’ vital signs. The project was kick started during Jan 2011 and Humana Cares has gone on to successfully leverage the full extent of Trapollo's complete managed service offering to provide patients with more awareness regarding the condition of their health and also to reduce the probability of these high risk patients getting hospitalized.

Kate Marcus, program manager for Humana Cares, is responsible for overseeing the national remote monitoring program. Marcus said, “Partnering with Trapollo has allowed our nurses to focus on the important clinical issues while Trapollo managed the logistics of installing the equipment in our members' homes as well as training them and providing technical support to all of us. We are further delighted that our members have responded so positively when rating their install, and training experiences.”

Leto added, “Many see interactive Telehealth systems as the most promising way to get health care costs under control for the future. The opportunity to work with Humana Cares on this project has been a learning experience for both of us. Based on this pilot, we have been able to fine tune our remote health monitoring managed services offering and are talking to other large health care providers who face the same challenges as Humana.”