Heart Profilers

[NRSKarenRN, BSN, RN]

From Advance for Nurses, November highlight:

New Online Tool Can Improve Patient Care and Enhance Role of Nurses

By Barbara J. Fletcher, MN http://www.advancefornurses.com/cover.html

........One important advance in use of technology has been introduced by the American Heart Association. The association is working with Nexcura Inc., a Seattle-based Internet technology company, to make a significant leap toward taming the Internet and creating order out of chaos. The result of this project has been the creation of a powerful set of free, online patient education tools called the Heart Profilers™ . These patient profilers are found on the Web at http://www.americanheart.org/heartprofilers .

Unlike typical informational Web sites, Heart Profilers is patient-specific. It matches each patient's medical information or profile with published clinical research studies, whether the patient has coronary artery disease, heart failure, atrial fibrillation, high blood pressure or cholesterol.

Treatment or risk factor information is specific to each individual patient's condition ensuring information is relevant and credible. The program takes about 20 minutes to sign up, to create a personalized profile and to generate an initial report. Patients can learn about medication side effects, understand how their treatment compares with others, and download questions that they should ask their physician....