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NIH awards grant to develop self-service health kiosk
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The National Institutes of Health has awarded a $1.2 million grant to SoloHealth for developing a comprehensive self-service health and wellness station. The EyeSite pioneers will be refocusing their kiosk technology to address common health problems and increase access to health care providers.
The SoloHealth EyeSite kiosks, launched in 2007, are located in seven metropolitan markets including Atlanta, Birmingham, Houston, St. Louis, Richmond, Madison and Salt Lake City, according to a company release. The EyeSite kiosks provide free basic vision screening, personalized wellness plans, health education and local eye doctor referrals.
The NIH grant will allow SoloHealth to develop the EyeSite kiosk into a more comprehensive self-service health and wellness station that uses a combination of health screening software and self-reported health information to produce individualized reports, the press release said. The reports will contain a health assessment, information on prevention, doctor referrals for follow-up care and coupons for relevant products and services.
“We’re adding additional features and functionality to the new kiosks, such as a blood pressure cuff, the ability to do body mass index and health risk assessment, and an interactive visual component similar to the EyeSite kiosk,” Bart Foster, CEO and founder of SoloHealth, told Primary Care Optometry News.
Asking for demographic information such as age, ethnicity and gender enable the kiosks to cue specific, relevant content to motivate at-risk users to take action, Mr. Foster said. For example, African American users older than 40 years will cue the statistic that they are five to seven times more likely to have glaucoma.
The grant from the NIH will help expand the available market for the health and wellness kiosks by implementing them in traditionally underserved communities.
“SoloHealth seeks to help expand access to health care for millions of people, and we believe that retail will be the frontline of health care. We’re going to partner with two or three national retailers who would look at a chain-wide roll out, depending on the location,” Mr. Foster said. “Our primary focus has been grocery stores that have a pharmacy. The people in underserved markets typically don’t have the latest technology and they don’t go to WebMD every day. But they do go to the grocery store, and our intent is to replace many of the outdated blood pressure machines in those grocery stores with the new kiosk.”
According to information provided by SoloHealth, more than 450,000 people have used the 100 EyeSite kiosks currently in operation. Of these, 24% had never had an eye exam.
For more information:
- Bart Foster, CEO and founder of SoloHealth, developer of the EyeSite Vision Kiosk, can be reached at 11555 Medlock Bridge, Suite 190, Duluth, GA 30097; (770) 622-4158; bfoster@solo-health.com; www.solo-health.com.