OnCare by Gearworks Unveiled, Enables Hospice Organizations to Enhance Productivity

Gearworks, a provider of location-based mobile business applications, has announced a new location-based solution for mobile health care, ‘OnCare by Gearworks’. The announcement was made at the annual conference of the National Association of Home Care and Hospice (NAHC) in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.

 

According to the prediction made by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there will be a steep fifty percent growth in the number of home health care and personal aides. The reason behind such growth is the increased demands of an aging population and as well as significant cost savings from delivering care at home. Present-day scenarios make home health care agencies struggle to meet the growing needs.

 

Gearworks said it’s OnCare by Gearworks is an out-of-the-box solution for health care. It leverages on global positioning system (GPS) to allow home care and hospice organizations to increase their productivity, ensure compliance and improve outcomes. The solution mainly simplifies management of care professionals in the field and allows organizations to focus on delivering quality patient care. By combining care plan information with location, organizations can ensure that patient care plans are followed and billed accurately. This not only reduces paperwork, it also accelerates payroll and reduces fuel costs.

 

The OnCare solution is primarily based on the company’s Appmosphere mobile application platform. The Appmosphere is a carrier-class, location-enabled mobile application delivery platform that represents a new category of application mobility platform-as-a-service (PaaS) solutions. It provides organizations with application mobility on-demand, on multiple wireless networks, on any mobile device and on the carrier’s monthly bill.

 

Gearworks’s Appmosphere was specifically designed to address the challenges faced by companies and independent software vendors intending to mobilize and location-enable their business applications. OnCare by Gearworks, which is based on Appmosphere, represents a new set of wireless carrier-delivered mobile business applications and has the capability to cater to the unique needs of specific market segments — such as home health care, said the company.

 

Key features of OnCare by Gearworks include: patient data security with login and screen-lock feature; easy timecards including integration to popular payroll systems; ‘panic/assistance button’ for enhanced staff safety; two-way messaging to constantly stay in-touch without text charges; automatic updated daily visit plans; alerts for schedule changes; pre-built integration with health care information systems for increased efficiency; configurable care plans to guide care and speed reimbursement; simple documentation with easy health care-specific data entries; turn-by-turn, audible navigation; over-the-air application updates, and much more.

 

OnCare by Gearworks can be deployed on BlackBerry (News - Alert) and other select mobile devices and is ready-to-integrate to health care information management systems. The company said it expects to begin the beta testing of OnCare in the fourth quarter and will commercially release it in 2009 Q1.