If you live in South Texas, text the word HEALTHY to 25827 using your cell phone to register. You must live in South Texas to be eligible to win one of 5 - $100 HEB gift cards. Drawing to be held January 16th. You win a chance to get healthy, too. Either way it’s up to you to take the next step.

As the Project Director of the soon to launch Healthy Families of South Texas community telehealth network, I’m proud to share important news about this new program which expands on our previous work funded in part by grants from the USDA. The project will launch with a community registry so everyone can participate; not just people with diabetes. Then in January we’ll launch the second tier which takes our profile based education to another level - a kind of diabetes version of Amazon’s expert profile based recommendations meets Facebook. The third tier involves working with pregnant mothers with diabetes of all types in the hopes of preventing serious complications. Here’s a quick overview for anyone interested in participating. Note that access to this program is being provided at no cost to the registered members and the 3 years of federal grant dollars means it will continue to enhance the lives of people in this part of Texas for many years to come.

What is the Healthy Families Program?

* HFSTX is an education and health monitoring community resource designed to establish a home based support network around people with diabetes and at risk for diabetes.

Program Goals:

* To improve self-care for patients and their families by increasing their knowledge of better lifestyle choices.

* To provide encouragement and reinforcement.

* To extend access to care into the home vs an unrealistic emphasis on office visits.

How does it work?

* Through Internet and cell phone technology and postcards, enroll patients and their families in the Healthy Families Registry.

* Over time, the Registry helps them to enhance individualized profiles making it possible for their team to receive personalized education and support via email, cell phone text messages and post cards in the mail according to their own preferences.

Check back in a week or two to find out the url for the online home for this program as this is still being decided.

Along with one of our solution partners, we’re announcing some big news this week at the bi-annual wireless trade show specific to people with diabetes: Your new technology innovations that ride on the cellular airwaves are now part of a covered diabetes education program!!! That is if you live in Texas and you have BlueCross BlueShield. There are also several health plans outside of Texas, too.

While the people with cool health related wireless technology at that show will spend a lot of money and a lot of time talking about how cool their stuff is, I am humbled at being the only that gets to tell them that after 8 years I have a way to actually get paid to put this cool stuff in the hands of patients. And not just that we get paid for our programs but that the payers hold our feet to the fire to show them outcomes like lower A1c and active participation. I actually have success metrics that I need to attain in order to continue working with patients and getting paid for that privelege.

It’s been my experience that success comes when all of the party’s interests are aligned. One common goal. That is certainly the case here and we look forward to working with these patients, capturing the outcomes data and reporting back to the payers who have agreed to cover our programs.

Forgive me if I come across as crowing over the next few weeks but it’s been a long hard row to hoe. Thanks to our randomized, controlled clinical trial data, patients finally have access to the good stuff and that happens to include wireless network airtime. For anyone with an idea that’s even half baked or looking for a way to move forward, we have that covered too via our R&D program incorporating the technology platform, wireless airtime, SIM cards, cell phone, smart phones, custom development and specific Regulatory compliance elements that are necessary before you put new stuff in the hands of real patients. More on this wireless health accelerator and how we provide streamlined and cost effective access to the market in a future post.

To sum the importance of this post in one thought - people with diabetes can now get what they need between doctor visits at no additional cost. How cool is that? and it just keeps getting better.