Fredericton Company Connects Long-Term Care Facilities And Families
FREDERICTON – Amidst the uncertainties of Covid-19, FamilyConnect‘s technology helps build that bridge between families and the long-term care facilities looking after their loved ones.
“The big thing with FamilyConnect is realizing that the family needs to be brought in as a valued member of the care team and information does need to get to them and we need technology to help us in that way,” said Amanda Betts, founder of both FamilyConnect and New Brunswick health tech startup, eChart Healthcare.
Through FamilyConnect’s web application families can sign up, register online and access the service on their web browser. Final touches are currently being made and the program is scheduled to be released in the next eight weeks.
“In April we really realized we had a whole different way to address this Covid issue,” said Betts. “It has developed basically as a response, to bring that family connection during the time of the Covid crisis.”
While eChart looks after the charting process within long-term care, taking all the documentation from paper into an electronic source, Family Connect pulls out the clinical information and gets into the hands of families who may not be in the electronic charting system.
“FamilyConnect comes at it from a different standpoint that was a little bit more influenced by Covid, focusing on getting certain information into the hands of the family that didn’t need the integration of an EHR (electronic health care record),” said Betts. “It’s a little bit of a spin-off and doing a few different things, but it does have the ability to stand alone.”
On FamilyConnect, caregivers can give personalized updates to families about their family members in long-term care, share information about how many potential residents are being tested for Covid and explain their policies and procedures.
“It can be brought into hospital settings as well; we are having conversations with some people in Ontario, and potentially working out some pilot programs in Ontario too,” said Betts. “It’s all across the healthcare continuum that the family needs to have access to information and we want to be that connector.”
Betts is working together with Accreon, the Fredericton-based health IT solutions company with whom they already work together on eChart, to make FamilyConnect a reality.
“We’ve built out a beautiful working relationship, everybody’s really excited because they like working on projects that have impact,” she said.
Betts hopes there will be much more attention given to long-term care and what kinds of technology can be brought into the sector to help frontline staff and operators, make better patient monitoring and improve transparency and communication.
“I think Covid has shed light on the long-term care sector and hopefully the higher-ups within the government and social development will see how we can pour resources in and better support what our staff and operators are doing,” she said.
“The impact of making sure long-term care is well established and supported is a big part of how we support the overall health care system.”
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