Windows Release Notes

Stabilix® Health Companion® Release Notes detail enhancements in the latest release for all supported platforms. These release notes document system requirements and installation related information pertinent to the current version’s release of Stabilix® Health Companion® desktop and all its components.

Installers can be found by downloading the available version at http://www.hc.stabilix.com/. See the section on Check for Upgrades if you have previously installed Health Companion®. The previous version will be overwritten when you install this latest release.

The latest Windows version is 2.00.01. In order to see the version details, select About Stabilix® Health Companion® located under the main menu option Help.

1. Minimum System Requirements  

2. New Features and Enhancements  

3. Check for Upgrades  

4. Health Companion® and Vista 

4.1. Steps for Upgrading to Health Companion® 2.00.01 for Users Wanting to Upgrade from Windows XP to Windows Vista 

4.2.  Vista Administration Rights

1 Minimum System Requirements 

1.1 Windows 

· Win 2000/XP/Vista - 32-bit 

· 400 MHz Pentium  

· 256 MB of RAM  

· 250 MB free disk space for software installation  

· 56 Kbps modem   

· 1024x768 monitor resolution  

· Adobe Acrobat reader 5.0 or higher

2 New Features and Enhancements 

The following is a brief description of the new features and enhancements available in Health Companion® version 2.00.01. Those who are using Health Companion® for the first time can refer to the Release Notes for version 1.19.01 for a comprehensive list of Health Companion®’s features that are common to all released versions (available on Health Companion®’s Portal).  

· HSA Toolset: consists of a set of 3 calculators that help you to determine whether an HSA (Health Savings Account) is suitable for your current and future healthcare requirements. 

§ HSA Contribution Calculator: calculates your maximum annual contribution and tax savings.  

§ HSA Goal Calculator: assesses the monthly amount to be deposited into your HSA in order to meet your savings goal by the time you retire. 

§ HSA Savings Calculator: provides a projected value of your HSA to the time of your retirement. 

· CSV Import Functionality: is a shortcut option for uploading medical and drug expense information directly into Health Companion®. This information is provided by your insurance carrier in the form of a CSV file. CSV stands for comma-separated values - an accepted file format issued by insurance companies.  

· Schedule of Benefit Setup: allows you to specify your insurance policy’s coverage rules for different benefit categories and services, thereby empowering Health Companion® to assess whether your insurance carrier is awarding correct coverage to claims and warning you of underpayments or incorrect assessment of services falling In- and Out-of-Network.  

· Potential Claim Payment Errors: works in tandem with Benefit Limit Amounts and Schedule of Benefit Setup to inform Health Companion® users of potential errors made by your insurance carrier in assessing a claim. 

· Financial Dashboard: provides a graphical representation of critical statistics and measures, related to your healthcare financial information. Healthcare expenses can be easily assessed by viewing charts for each of these categories: Healthcare Expense Breakdown by Benefit Category, Healthcare Expense by Episodes, My Payment vs. Insurance Company Payment, Medical vs. Drug Expense Breakdown and Monthly Healthcare Expense Breakdown by Family Member. 

·     Health Expenses and Payments: now allows you to record expenses as a single medical expense; capture multiple detailed services for an expense and indicate multiple-insurance coverage.  

· Health Companion® Inquiry: has a new save search feature. After specifying a set of search criteria, you can save the selected criteria to conduct future searches as and when required. 

· Outlook Calendar Integration: MS-Outlook users can opt to have their email reminders and events scheduled into Outlook’s calendar. 

· Health Companion® Reporting: has these changes:  

§ Available reports appears as a link in a list instead of on individual tabs

§ All reports display much more information than in the previous version

§ New reports: Personal Expense History, Personal Medical History Health Account Audit and Expense Status 

§ Personal Claim History has been split into two reports: Personal Medical History and Personal Expense History 

§ Personal Drug History has been renamed to Personal Medication History and now includes the ability to indicate whether a drug is ‘Active Prescription Only’ or ‘OTC’

§ The transfer of Positive and Negative Reports from Shortcuts to Reporting 

§ Removal of Calendar Schedule (reports for this can still be generated from Calendar) and Personal Health Data Reporting (reports for this can still be generated from Personal Health Records)

 · Associated Documents: allows you to attach the hard or soft copy of documents associated with a specific Medical or Drug expense.  

· Dispute Letter Template: enables you to create dispute letter templates for contacts, providers and insurance companies in order to avoid what could be a needless repetitive task. 

3 Check for Upgrades 

For existing Health Companion® users, a check for any available upgrades can be done directly from within the application. 

In order to check if any new versions of Health Companion® are available, select Check for Upgrades under the main menu option Stabilix Services or from the right side of the HC desktop under Stabilix® Health Companion® Services. 

4 Health Companion® and Vista 

Stabilix® Health Companion® 2.00.01 can be downloaded and installed on PCs running Windows Vista. However, if you were running Health Companion® 2.00.01 (or any of its earlier versions) under Windows XP, you must first make a backup of your database while running Windows XP before upgrading your Windows and installing Health Companion® 2.00.01.  

4.1 Steps for Upgrading to Health Companion® 2.00.01 for Users Wanting to Upgrade from Windows XP to Windows Vista 

Step one: Create a backup while running Health Companion® on Windows XP

 This step must be performed while Windows XP is still your operating system. You can initiate the creation of a backup directly by selecting ‘Backup Health Companion’ found under Health Companion®’s main menu option ‘Administration'. The pop-up window allows you to name the backup file and select a location on your computer to store it. By default, backups are saved as ‘backup.shc’.
Health Companion® also asks whether you would like to create a backup of the information each time you exit the application. You can answer Yes, No or Cancel to the ‘Would you like to back up your data now?’ question.  

If you click ‘Yes’ then:
1. Provide a location to store backups on your machine
2. Enter an easy-to-recognize name
3. Click 'Save’  

If you click ‘No’ then:
1. The application exits  

If you click ‘Cancel’ then:
1. The application remains open  

Step two: Install Windows Vista 

You can follow the usual procedure for installing the Windows Vista operating system.

 Step three: Install Health Companion® 2.00.01  

Download the latest setup from www.hc.stabilix.com; uninstall the existing version of Health Companion® (before uninstalling the existing version, please ensure that you keep a copy of your License Key, Licensee Email and the Portal Access User Name and Password accessible from outside the application – you can obtain this information from Administration menu à Health Companion® Setup).  

Finally, install the latest version. DO NOT USE THE “CHECK FOR UPGRADE FEATURE”.

 Step four: Restore Backup Data 

Select ‘Restore Health Companion’, from under ‘Administration’. Browse to the location on your computer where your backups are stored and click ‘Open’. Backup data will be restored and available for viewing, printing up reports and charts, analysis and updating.

If your backup data was password protected, keep note of the username and password. Restoring your backup will reinstate both the username and password. 

Note: After upgrading Health Companion®, the application automatically converts backups, at the time of restoration to meet the current version’s requirements.  

4.2 Vista Administration Rights 

If you are a user, without administration rights, then Stabilix® Health Companion® will not contain any data entered by the Administrator or vice versa. This issue can be avoided if the Administrator performs the following steps after installation of Stabilix® Health Companion®: 

Step one: Right click on Stabilix® Health Companion® icon and select Properties.

Step two: Within the Properties Window, click the on the ‘Compatibility’ tab. 

Step three: Under the Compatibility tab, click the ‘Show settings for all users’ button. Before opening the next window Vista will ask you to confirm whether you want to proceed with this action - click Continue.

Step four: In the new Stabilix® Health Companion® Properties window, check the ‘Run this program as an administrator’ box.

Stabilix® Health Companion® Release Notes detail enhancements in the latest release. These release notes document system requirements and installation related information pertinent to the current version’s release of Stabilix® Health Companion® desktop and all its components.

Installers can be found by downloading the available version at http://www.hc.stabilix.com/. 

The latest Mac version is 2.00.01. In order to see the version details, select About Stabilix® Health Companion® located under the main menu option Help.

Table of Contents

1. Minimum System Requirements

2. New Features and Enhancements

3. Installation

1 Minimum System Requirements

1.1 Macintosh

• J2SE 5.0 or greater (download from http://www.apple.com if required)

• Mac OS X 10.4.X (Tiger) version

• 256 MB

2 Features and Enhancements

Salient Features of Stabilix® Health Companion®

• Family Members: record members so as to assign primary, secondary and tertiary insurance coverage.

• Insurance Policies: record different policies and assign coverage details

· Health Expenses and Payments: record and track healthcare expenses and payments as a single medical expense; capture multiple detailed services for an expense and indicate multiple-insurance coverage.

• Health Accounts Management: manage savings accounts such as: HRA, HSA, FSA, etc.

• Benefit Accumulation Estimator: graphical representation of Benefit Limit Amounts

• Personal Health Records: record members’ health statistics such as: blood pressure, weight, etc.

• Health Companion® Inquiry: assemble relevant information for claiming tax benefits, creating reports, etc. It also has a save search feature. After specifying a set of search criteria, you can save the selected criteria to conduct future searches as and when required.

• Calendar: record events and provide automated reminders 

• Contacts: contacts directory

• Health Companion® Portal: accesses the internet

• Health Companion® Forum: join or create insurance/application/feature enhancement related discussions

• Health Companion® Backup/Restore: create and restore previously entered data

• Chat Online: access help from online operators 

• HSA Toolset: consists of a set of 3 calculators that help you to determine whether an HSA (Health Savings Account) is suitable for your current and future healthcare requirements.

§ HSA Contribution Calculator: calculates your maximum annual contribution and tax savings. 

§ HSA Goal Calculator: assesses the monthly amount to be deposited into your HSA in order to meet your savings goal by the time you retire.

§ HSA Savings Calculator: provides a projected value of your HSA to the time of your retirement.

• CSV Import Functionality: is a shortcut option for uploading medical and drug expense information directly into Health Companion®. This information is provided by your insurance carrier in the form of a CSV file. CSV stands for comma-separated values - an accepted file format issued by insurance companies. 

· Schedule of Benefit Setup: allows you to specify your insurance policy’s coverage rules for different benefit categories and services, thereby empowering Health Companion® to assess whether your insurance carrier is awarding correct coverage to claims and warning you of underpayments or incorrect assessment of services falling In- and Out-of-Network.

· Potential Claim Payment Errors: works in tandem with Benefit Limit Amounts and Schedule of Benefit Setup to inform Health Companion® users of potential errors made by your insurance carrier in assessing a claim.

· Financial Dashboard: provides a graphical representation of critical statistics and measures, related to your healthcare financial information. Healthcare expenses can be easily assessed by viewing charts for each of these categories: Healthcare Expense Breakdown by Benefit Category, Healthcare Expense by Episodes, My Payment vs. Insurance Company Payment, Medical vs. Drug Expense Breakdown and Monthly Healthcare Expense Breakdown by Family Member.

· Health Companion® Reporting: generates printable reports for the following categories: Personal Expense History, Personal Medical History, Personal Medication History, Health Account Expense, Cost per Episode, Tax Deductible Expense, Expense Status, Personal Contacts, Health Account Audit and Positive and Negative Balance.

· Associated Documents: allows you to attach the hard or soft copy of documents associated with a specific Medical or Drug expense.

• Dispute Letter Template: enables you to create dispute letter templates for contacts, providers and insurance companies in order to avoid what could be a needless repetitive task. 

3 Installation

3.1 Installation for Macintosh

Step one: Ensure your Mac meets Health Companion®’s minimum system requirements

The system requirements are:

J2SE 5.0 or greater

Mac OS X 10.4.5 or later

256 MB

Download and install J2SE 5.0 from http://www.apple.com.

Double click the setup for starting the installation process and then follow the on-screen instructions to complete installation.

In order to configure Java preferences, use "Finder" to locate and open J2SE 5.0. Finder -> Applications -> Utilities -> Java ->Java2E.5.0->Java Preferences. Open "Java Preferences" and in the "Java Application Runtime Settings" section, drag "J2SE 5.0" to the top of the list. Click the "Save" button.

Step two: Download and install Health Companion® 

1. Follow the link provided in the “Welcome” email from Stabilix to download Health_Companion_macos_1_20_02.dmg. 

2. Double-click the .dmg file to begin installation.

Upon successfully installing Stabilix® Health Companion®, the shortcut (if you have selected this option during Setup) can be found within the “Applications” folder.

Note: Information and Screenshot courtesy of CenterKey Software - http://www.centerkey.com/mac/java

Step three: Create a shortcut on your desktop

After installation is complete, you may want to place a Stabilix® Health Companion® shortcut icon on your desktop. You can do this by performing the following steps:

1.  Open Finder -> Applications -> Stabilix® Health Companion®.

2. Right click on Stabilix® Health Companion®’s icon and select the “Make Alias” option, a second Stabilix® Health Companion® icon appears within the Stabilix® Health Companion® folder.

3. Right click and copy “HealthCompanion alias” and then paste the icon on your desktop.