Kentwood (MI), March 9th, 2009 - The Vital for Diabetes solution by VitalHealth Software continues to evolve at a rapid pace. In the past few months detailed attention has been given to the various feature requests submitted by users. This effort has led to the release of Vital for Diabetes version 3.1, currently already deployed to about 150 practices.

Reporting
Several reporting capabilities have been added that enable practices and care groups to create their own reports. This allows physicians to generate ad-hoc overviews of the diabetes population. Also, each practice has access to a report tracking their own process indicators, outcomes measurements and comparisons to averages. This report is based on nationally established diabetes indicators, such as the number of patients with an HbA1c level exceeding 7%, or the number of patients for which an LDL level has been measured.

Labs integrations
Disease management of a diabetes population involves regular lab tests to measure e.g. glucose levels. Lab result are often transmitted to an EMR via MEDLAB messages. Vital for Diabetes has been enabled to receive and interpret these MEDLAB messages, seamlessly integrating lab results into the solution.

EMR integrations
With Vital for Diabetes 3.1, the types of MEDLAB messages that can be exchanged with EMRs has been significantly expanded. VitalHealth solutions can now process message in the categories diagnosis, foot exams, education and treatment, vitals and labs. The medical professional can indicate which categories need to be transmitted. Next to that, MEDVRI messages can be transmitted containing commentary by the medical professional, to be included in the receiving EMR’s journals.

Patient specific targets
For every patient, target values can be specified for systolic blood pressure, weight, body size, fasting blood glucose, HbA1c and LDL-cholesterol. These target values can be entered on the “Education and treatment” tab during a check-up, and are also shown in reports provided to the patient as a reference.

Performance optimizations
As part of a continuous effort to improve overall performance, several actions have been taken to target specific opportunities for improvement. Both development tests as well as field tests have shown significant improvements in performance. A few weeks ago about 80 practices have upgraded to the new version, resulting in very positive feedback. Virtually all users personally noticed a performance improvement of up to about 50% of the original performance.

Next version
In the upcoming version of Vital for Diabetes, the reporting and treatment expense modules will be expanded with new functionality. Besides that a more seamless integration will be created between Hospital EMRs and the VitalHealth solution. These improvements are scheduled to become available towards the end of Q1 2009.

For additional information, please contact us at: +1 (979) 480-3535.