As we go...

 Friends, Likers and supporters of Tartoos. It has been our mission to have our product be accessible to as many individuals as possible! This is why we are very organically grown, without investor help as to keep our pricepoint low and stay on track with our mission! However, we still need to get the word out there- the goal for the next 30 days to get noticed by the Dr. Oz show! Help us out - letters, Facebook posts and the like, share our story!

Rachael

Up and Running!

I am so excited to announce that myvisualmedical.com is up, running and ready for Tartoos orders! We have had a bunch of wonderful press this past week and  have been received so warmly by our audience. It remains a top priority for Visual Medical to keep its products easily accessible, so please let us know about your charity walks and runs, non-profit missions and fund raisers. We would like to continue to give back to a community that has supported and held us on their shoulders as we continue with our hopes of making chronic disease management a little easier.

 

Rachael

rj@myvisualmedical.com

Thank you!

A very big -Thank You- to Chris Leach and Insulin Nation for featuring a story about Tartoos! Since, we have had  very diverse interest for our little product and are getting geared up for product to consumer launch in early May. I am learning, learning , learning and am adjusting business time lines accordingly as I originally relayed that we would be up and running by UMMMM, March :).  Here's to a busy April!

Rachael

First Press Coverage!

Please check out Visual Medical's - Tartoos first press coverage on:

http://insulinnation.com/a-tattoo-even-mom-will-love/

Thank you everyone for your continuing support!

Rachael

rj@myvisualmedical.com

Other Factors....

I work hard to understand injection site management issues across disease states, lifespan, socio-economic classes and cultural categories. It’s challenging to grasp the multi-faceted issues that stem from injectable medication administration. In researching complications from injection therapy, such as scar tissue accumulation and infection, I bristle at how many times medical literature label patients with these complications as “non-compliant.”  The use of this word clearly is meant to imply a willing disobedience or an intentional mismanagement of one’s health. HMMMMMM…..

Barriers to optimal self-care are much different than indifference or laziness as some professionals and others may choose to believe. Barriers (in my opinion) include those life circumstances that compromise or complicate our ability to care for ourselves or loved ones.  These may include finances, lack of support systems, other priority health issues, grief, stress, physical limitations etc…. Ironically these may be the type of life circumstances that are rarely taken into consideration when formulating a patient treatment plan. Assumptions can easily and erroneously be made about patients’ motives about how effectively they are managing their self-care and various dynamics in their lives.

Case in point: Around the same time my husband, Craig, was going through chemo therapy treatment for stage 4 lymphoma, our oldest son, Carter, was diagnosed with Graves disease. The medication Carter was on to treat his wonky thyroid had a host of side effects, including a depletion of his immune system. Strict parameters were put on Carter’s care from the physician and he was to go in for blood work anytime his temperature would rise over 100 degrees or a sore throat was present.  I was also on fever watch with Craig. The side-effects of chemo left him with no immune system and he was continually in danger of developing a life-threatening illness.  I carried around thermometers as if they were in holsters on the sides on my pants so I was ready to catch any fever that may be lurking around our neck of the woods.  Sleep deprived and emotionally exhausted, I was not as vigilant as I should have been one evening as Craig became sick. A fever went unchecked and my husband ended up in the hospital with a raging infection in is blood stream. The hospital personnel asked me a myriad of questions I could not answer because I was overwhelmed at this point. I was asked, “When did the fever start,” and “How high has it gotten?” If the staff had asked these questions the week before when I was fresh, alert, and not a walking zombie, I would have been able to answer all their questions with steely certainty, but not during this snapshot moment of my care giving.  

As Visual Medical moves forward, it is a deep running part of our mission to educate OURSELVES on the strengths and needs of others. We seek to look beyond the clinical application for our products and take into consideration the complexity of our clients’ existence.  Thank you once again for reading!

Your Story

Taking a quick departure from injection site management to update on Tartoos product development! Our fingers are crossed that our inventory and e-commerce site will be up by the end of February with the completed Tartoos product ready for purchase! As we are committed to offering the most well refined products for chronic disease management; Visual Medical would love to hear your stories of empowering strategies used in daily health management. A continuous, strong, open dialogue is needed to help support other's in our community, please share your journey with us! The comment box at the end of this post can be utilized or email directly at rj@myvisualmedical.com.

Why injection site managment?

In my different vocational roles, I have had the privilege of working along side clinical educators who have instructed on a variety of health related issues. However, I credit one education experience as being the catalyst for why I have a particular interest in injection site management.

As staff escorted a family who had a newly diagnosed little one with Type I diabetes to our education room, I gathered my materials for what would be presented to them in our session. I heaved the 100 plus page family education binder onto the table and started surveying the scene.. Syringes, alcohol wipes, anatomical charts, blood glucose meter, monitoring strips and insulin pens littered the table where this family would learn in all its complexity what it really takes to now care for their child. Tired, the parents listened to another 2 hours of instruction and diligently practiced pulling up syringes of saline to mimic insulin administration. Holding the syringes up to the lights, the parents would squint, examine them for microscopic differences in dosage, look to the educators for a nod of approval and practice over again and again to make sure it was emblazoned into their memory. Rote learning was used to teach the importance of technique, selecting an injection site, pinching the skin, cleaning and making sure to choose a different site for the next injection. Over and over this sequence was preformed; however, one concept was routinely highlighted as unclear. How to ensure that injection sites were adequately rotated was never fully realized and understood. You see, the teaching tools for this consisted of anatomical charts with grid - like patterns (Figure 1). Frankly, it is a confusing display in my opinion as the image is not to individual scale of the child and does not offer any real world systematic approach. The best suggestion offered to the parents was to use imagination: "Pretend there's a clock or calendar on your child's abdomen, place injection's at 12,1,2," and so on. As I was trying hard to remember if I had fed the dog that morning, I wondered if I would be able to execute this if my child needed this level of care.

 

(Figure 1)
My thoughts drifted back to when Carter received his autism spectrum diagnosis. The expectations that were placed on the level of care he would need included, speech, occupational and physical therapies, accommodations at school, medication to control his neurological ticks, anxiety and ADHD, home behavior interventions, and so on. It was assumed by the medical staff who cared for him that Carter's needs were the only priority issues in our family. Important? Yes! VERY, but not ONLY. It had to be taken into consideration that our family was complex, with many needs and different dynamics.

Focusing my attention back to our session, my ear caught yet another parent asking, "How do we keep track of where this injection was placed?"- I knew then, this was not a lack of understanding on part of our clientele- it was on us, who were utilizing methods and tools to teach that were not effective. 
 

Injection Therapy

As I will be talking a lot about the management of injectable medication issues in my next few blogs, I thought I would quickly define some terminology that is used on the LaunchRock site and that helps further define and clarify the clinical need for Visual Medical's Tartoos!


Quick Tutorial:

Injection site- place on the body where an injection is given

Injection site rotation- Choosing a different area of the body each and every time an injection is given- with some medications (insulin, blood thinners), it is recommended that you rotate within the same general area of the body such as the abdomen, due to faster absorption rates

Disinfection of the injection site- Cleaning the skin before an injection is given to prevent infection

(Infection of injection site)

 

Lipohypertrophy- Scar tissue accumulation from repeatedly injecting and over use of one particular injection site

(Scar tissue accumulation due to lack of injection site rotation, this gentleman only injected immediately to the left and right of his naval for 30 plus years)

Although injection therapies have been proven to be highly effective in disease management when administered correctly; consistent care (rotation and disinfection) of the injection site is often compromised due to the challenges of injection site management and remembering where the last injection was placed on the body. With no way of knowing where the patient last injected, overuse of injection sites can easily happen leading to an irregular build-up of scar tissue called lipohypertrophy. Scar tissue accumulation (lipohypertrophy) occurs when patients repeatedly inject into the same site on the body. As skin tissue thickens, critical medication absorption decreases in an upwards of 25%, compromising medication efficacy leading to poor disease management, increases in hospitalization and mortality.[1] Among Type 1 Diabetics alone, lipohypertrophy occurs up to 48.8% in the patient population and in 28% of Type 2 Diabetics.[2]

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[1] Johansson et al., (2005). Impaired absorption of insulin as part from lipohypertrophic injection sites.

Diabetes Care, 28, 2025-2027. doi:10.2337/diacare.28.8.2025

[2]Vadar B., Kizilei S., (2007). Incidence of lipohypertrophy in diabetic patients a study of influencing factors.

Diabetes Research and Clinical Practice,77, 231-236.doi:10.1016/j.diabres.2006.12.023

Our Story My brothers and I. Aaron (middle), Luke (right) and Alex. Visual Medical was inspired by many brave individuals who have managed severe, chronic illness with tremendous perseverance and unbelievable grace. It is our mission to discover and develop products through medically sound approaches for disease management incorporating the importance of: Education- To streamline teaching of disease self-management techniques with tangible and efficient methods to promote the best self-care possible. Accessibility- For our products to be understood, easily accessed and utilized across age, cultural, socio-economic background and cognitive ability. Empowerment- By providing tools for innovative and creative chronic disease management. The story that built Visual Medical begins with my experience as a sibling to brothers who were medically complex. Fate would have it that my youngest brother’s life was almost taken from him during a near SIDS episode at 3 months old, as a result Alex suffered from a severe lack of oxygen. For 20 years he has utilized a wheelchair, dependent to be fed, bathed or moved in any way. He does not have the ability to communicate verbally, however we know by the twinkle in his eye he possesses deep understanding for the workings of the world around him. Our family dynamic changed again, when my brother Luke was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at the age of 5. He has shown a tremendous amount of resilience throughout his life, faithfully checking his glucose levels and administering insulin numerous times a day.  Despite the daily demand of managing his diabetes, Luke has an easy laugh and is one of the most wonderful young men I know.   My parents had the superhuman task of care-taking 4 children, two of which had complicated life consuming medical conditions. At best things were hectic; however my parents took the task head on creating their own systems to keep track of the enormity of health related duties. Through all this they searched for ways to soften the blows, laugh and have fun. My siblings and I learned priceless lessons on empathy and flexibility, encouraging us to give the world a deeper look and with open hearts embrace need around us.  I now have three beautiful boys of my own, of whom my oldest, Carter, is on the autism spectrum. In addtion to social delays, his physical health has also presented challenges, struggling with asthma, neurological tics, Graves disease and other rheumatologic issues.  He is brilliantly smart, funny and a very important part of our family, though his care takes careful thought and consideration. Our lives became more complicated 2 years ago upon the diagnosis of my husband’s stage 4 lymphoma. During his treatment, I tried my hardest to keep on top of his care, however sometimes the enormity of our situation was lost on people and medical staff would become impatient when we were late for an appointment or would misstep in some other minor issue. I wished there was a way for them to gain insight into the complexity or our lives and understand we were doing the best we could. Having 10 years of experience in the healthcare field has brought a unique understanding to the medical diagnoses of my loved ones. I knew the medical community could do better,  when my husband's complicated lab and chemo schedule involved running with our little ones for hours at a time, or when Carter received his autism diagnosis - being abruptly presented with a handbook and sent on my way. There was room to try harder, empathize more and dig deeper to provide better, more holistic care. Inspired by my parents, brothers, son, husband and patients I have cared for over the years. I want to make chronic disease management easier. In the crazy of everyday life, I want families to feel successful and competent when taking care of themselves or a loved one and maybe have some fun while doing it. In the next few days I will be posting images of our first product offering TARTOOS. Visual Medical has a goal to keep this product at no or minimal cost to the patients who would utilize it. In order for this to happen-interest has to be sparked! We are hoping by the power of social media our story will be shared and we can create a fire under our little business. We have set a goal of having 20,000 individuals register on our LaunchRock site. Registration only will present us with documented interest for our product, your information will not be shared, no obligation or purchases required. Once you have visited http://tartoos.launchrock.com/  please fill in the required fields and repost on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Pinterest! Rachael jacquesrachael1@gmail.com rj@myvisualmedical.com Share this page on Facebook