Helping reduce hospital readmissions is a large reasons for bringing digital and mobile health technologies to market, especially ones that allow patients to take more control over their care while at home and after they leave the hospital the first time.

That’s where remote patient monitoring comes in, and numerous companies large and small are entering the race.  It was announced that AT&T is teaming up with Intuitive Health to pilot a home-based remote monitoring solution that helps engage patients and family members in their own care, while seamlessly involving healthcare providers through integration with their clinical information systems.  The end goal for the pilot is to help reduce hospital readmissions and associated healthcare costs, while increasing quality of care and patient satisfaction.

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It’s been announced by the American Medical Association (AMA) and AT&T that the two have forged a partnership to enable “hundreds of thousands of physicians, physician organizations and medical societies nationwide to connect and collaborate with hospitals, payers and patients to help enhance patient care and reduce costs.”

To accomplish this goal, the two organizations will integrate the AMA’s “AMAGINE” physician community portal with AT&T’s “Healthcare Community Online,” which will create a centralized, advanced collaborative care and Healthcare Information Exchange (HIE) platform.  Together, both organizations have the primary goal of providing physicians with more “tools at their fingertips to modernize the management of their practices.”

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AT&T is continuing its large-scale mobile health initiative by announcing the introduction of its “Developer Center for mHealth,” which provides an open set of developer tools and infrastructure services to “streamline, accelerate and lower costs in the development, deployment and management of enterprise-grade mHealth applications.”

Launched as a beta version, the new developer center has the aim of providing an ecosystem where disparate applications can link together, at the direction of the healthcare consumer, to create a more complete, accessible, and personalized healthcare experience.

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The Indiana Health Information Exchange (IHIE), the largest in the nation, has announced a partnership with AT&T’s Healthcare Community Online to provide a highly-secure, scalable and flexible clinical interface integration platform.

IHIE covers more than ten million patients, more than 19,000 physicians, and over 80 facilities, and currently has more than four billion pieces of clinical data in its repository — delivering three million highly-secure health transactions daily.  It works with hospitals, long-term care facilities, clinics and physician practices to ensure that health information is where it needs to be, when it needs to be there to help improve care coordination and patient outcomes.

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It’s been announced that PositiveID, makers of mobile medical devices for diabetes management, has gained AT&T certification for its “iGlucose” system in addition to access to the largest US-based global network for connectivity.

PositiveID’s FDA-cleared iGlucose mHealth system is designed to “simplify diabetes management” for the millions of individuals impacted by the ever-growing disease.  Through its AT&T certification, users of iGlucose now have access to AT&T’s vast data network, allowing for remote data-transfer in real-time.  iGlucose is the first and only pocket-sized mobile health device specifically designed to connect to industry leading glucometers to transmit blood glucose readings anytime, anywhere.

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It was announced today that AT&T has launched two new initiatives aimed at helping healthcare organizations deploy secure tablet solutions and send secure messaging, all while adhering to strict HIPAA and other regulatory guidelines.

The first solution being introduced is called “AT&T Managed Tablets,” which is touted as a “highly secure, end-to-end management solution bundling software and services with any tablet that is easy to purchase and deploy.  AT&T’s aim with the new managed solution is to help healthcare organizations better regulate the use of tablets by “controlling their introduction into the networked environment, ensuring that the devices have the appropriate security capabilities and can be remotely wiped if the device becomes lost or stolen.”

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We knew AT&T was serious about mobile healthcare through its “emerging devices” unit, but the next phase of its rollout takes things to the next level.

The #2 wireless carrier announced recently that it plans to begin offering clothing that includes wireless sensors to track health information.  The new sensors track everything from heart rate, body temperature and other vital signs and uploads the results to a web portal via AT&T’s network.  The company said bio-tracking clothing ties in to the burgeoning “e-wellness” trend.  “People want this kind of feedback about their health,” Glenn Lurie, President of AT&T’s Emerging Devices division said in an interview with Forbes.  “Automatically pushing information to a vertically-integrated site makes things easier.”

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