Health Hero Network's systemsare protected by 57 issued US patents

Health Hero Network has been the leadingprovider of telehealth technology to the CCHT program.The company's Health Buddy System, the telehealth platform deployedextensively by the VA and used in the CMS Health Buddy Project, helpsindividuals with chronic conditions stay healthier while empowering theircaregivers with knowledge to keep complications from worsening to thepoint where those individuals need to be hospitalized. Since late 2007,Health Hero Network has been a wholly owned subsidiary of Robert BoschNorth America.The Health Buddy System supports individuals with chronic conditions inself-care, while keeping them in daily contact with their caregivers.Individuals who use the system get support in self-care behaviors including medication compliance, diet, and exercise tailored to theirunique conditions. Their caregivers get an actionable stream of knowledgeto make targeted interventions at the first sign of symptoms or gaps inbehavioral or knowledge that left unremediated could lead to apainful and expensive hospitalization.The Health Buddy Project is being conducted under Medicare's CareManagement for High-Cost Beneficiaries Demonstration. The program's design involvessupporting physicians, nurses, and Medicare beneficiaries with the HealthBuddy System in a relationship that keeps those beneficiaries healthierand out of the hospital through self-care and early detection ofcomplications."The programs in the demonstration have had a positive impact on selectedhigh-cost Medicare beneficiaries and have met and/or exceeded the savingstarget required in the demonstration agreement," the Centers for Medicareand Medicaid Services said in a news release announcing the extension ofthe Health Buddy Project, as well as two other Care Management forHigh-Cost Beneficiaries programs. "By extending the demonstration foranother 3 years and frequently evaluating their financial status, each ofthe programs would have the opportunity to continue to impact theirpopulations, maximize savings, and assist CMS in determining thereplicability of the programs."In a groundbreaking study published December 31 in The Journal ofTelemedicine and e-Health, VA clinicians revealed the outcomes of thefirst multi-year evaluation at scale of the agency's Care CoordinationHome Telehealth Program.

The study also cited the program'smodest cost of $1,600 per enrolled patient per year. The VA plans torapidly expand the deployment of its telehealth program, forecasting morethan 50,000 patients will be monitored on telehealth systems by 2011."The policy effects that result from the implementation of CCHT areprofound," VA researchers said in the findings of their recent paper. "If50 of patients requiring (non-institutional care) can ultimately bemanaged in a way that means they get improved access to care at lower costand higher quality, then this represents an important advance. It meansthat a low cost and flexible solution will be available to deal with thelarge numbers of patients with chronic care conditions that health caresystems know they need to serve."Renowned for ease of use, the Health Buddy System empowers patients andthe people who care for them by improving patient self-care and behaviorwhile enabling care providers to access timely information and intervenebefore conditions become acute. The system's features start with theHealth Buddy(R) appliance and other licensee devices that allow patientsto communicate with healthcare professionals by answering a small numberof daily questions related to their medical condition and activities. Thesystem offers analytics that then stratify and present this data through a secure Web-based interface called the Health Buddy Desktop to empower healthcare professionals to quickly identify problems and takecorrective action.The Health Buddy System features health management programs deliveringpersonalized daily monitoring and patient education in order to promotepositive behavior change and provide timely, relevant, and actionableinformation to care providers; many Health Hero Network programs arecertified by the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA).

HealthHero Network customers are using programs, delivered on the Health BuddySystem, that cover a wide range of conditions including heart failure,cardiovascular disease, diabetes, asthma, COPD, and mental health.About the Bosch Group and Health Hero NetworkThe Bosch Group is a leading global supplier of technology and services.In the areas of automotive and industrial technology, consumer goods, andbuilding technology, some 272,000 associates generated sales of 46.1billion euros ($63.2 billion) in fiscal 2007. The Bosch Group comprisesRobert Bosch GmbH and its roughly 300 subsidiary and regional companies inover 50 countries. This worldwide development, manufacturing, and salesnetwork is the foundation for further growth. The Health Buddy System serves as theinterface between patients at home and care providers, facilitatingmonitoring of and self-management support for patients with chronicconditions.

Health Hero Network's systemsare protected by 57 issued US patents. For more information, visit more information, please contact:SutherlandGold GroupGeorge O'Brien or Evan SolomonEmail ContactCopyright 2009, Market Wire, All rights reserved.-0-. STANFORD, Calif.(Business Wire)Your grandmothers habit of hoarding pennies in a jar notwithstanding, until nowtheres been no hard evidence that economic events like the Great Depressionactually change investment behavior. However, a new study reported in thismonths Stanford Knowledgebase, stands conventional economic wisdom on its head.Researchers Stefan Nagel and Ulrike Malmendier have successfully demonstratedthat personal experience does matter - and that the economic times we livethrough have a significant impact on how we invest our money. "Economists have traditionally not made a distinction between knowledge andexperience," said Nagel, an associate professor of finance at the StanfordGraduate School of Business who teaches the first-year MBA course on financialmarkets. His coauthor is associate professor of economics at the University ofCalifornia, Berkeley. Both Nagel and Malmendier were born in Germany, and hadbeen similarly struck by the fact that older relatives who had lived through aperiod of hyper-inflation in the 1920s seemed to have different attitudes towardinvesting than later generations.