It is hard to imagine that many aspects of our lives have not been digitized in the past year or so. One area that has certainly not bucked the trend is the healthcare sector. During the pandemic, many of us cannot go to the doctor as usual. They use digital technology to get medical care and advice.
For many years, digital technology has been driving changes in patient care, but there is no doubt that Covid-19 has catalyzed a large increase. Some people call it “the dawn of the telemedicine era”, and it is estimated that the global telemedicine market will reach 191.7 billion US dollars by 2025.
During the pandemic, the proliferation of telephone and video calls replaced face-to-face consultations. This has attracted a lot of attention, and this is correct. Virtual consulting platforms have proven to be successful and very popular-even among the older generation.
But the pandemic has also distinguished another unique component of telemedicine: remote patient monitoring (RPM).
RPM involves providing patients with home measurement devices, wearable sensors, symptom trackers, and/or patient portals. It enables clinicians to monitor the physical signs of patients so that they can fully evaluate their health and provide treatment recommendations when necessary without having to see them in person. For example, my own company is promoting innovation in the field of digital cognitive assessment of Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia. When leading the cognitive assessment platform, I have seen these changes in seismic technology can guide healthcare to provide patients with more adaptive solutions and services.
In the UK, the first high-profile RPM examples appeared during the June 2020 pandemic. NHS England announced that it will provide thousands of cystic fibrosis (CF) patients with spirometers to measure their vital capacity, and an app to share their measurement results with their doctors. For those CF patients who are already facing considerable breathing difficulties and Covid-19 represents an extreme risk, this move is hailed as good news.
Pulmonary function readings are essential to monitor the progress of CF and inform ongoing treatment. However, these patients will have to go to the hospital without providing measurement equipment and a simple way of direct but non-invasive communication with clinicians. In related deployments, when patients recover from Covid-19 at home, they can access network platforms, smartphone apps, and digital pulse oximeters (used to measure blood oxygen saturation). The plan is spearheaded by NHSX, the digital transformation unit of the NHS.
As patients are discharged from real wards to “virtual wards” (the term is now mature in the healthcare industry), clinicians can track the patient’s body temperature, heart rate, and blood oxygen level in almost real time. If the patient’s condition seems to deteriorate, they will receive an alert, simplifying the process of identifying patients in urgent need of rehospitalization.
This kind of virtual ward does not just save the lives of discharged patients: by freeing up beds and clinicians’ time, these digital innovations offer the potential to simultaneously improve patient treatment outcomes in “real” wards.
It is important to note that the advantages of remote patient monitoring (RPM) do not only apply to pandemics, even if it will definitely help us fight the virus for some time to come.
Luscii is a provider of RPM services. Like many telemedicine companies, it has recently experienced a surge in customer demand and is known as an approved supplier under the UK government’s public sector cloud procurement framework. (Full disclosure: Luscii is a user of Cognetivity technology for different use cases.)
Luscii’s home monitoring solution provides automatic integration of patient data between home measurement devices, patient portals, and the hospital’s electronic health record (EHR) system. Its home monitoring solutions have been deployed to help patients suffering from various long-term health conditions, such as heart failure, hypertension, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).
This RPM can help doctors and nurses take a more flexible approach to managing patients. They may only schedule appointments when the patient’s signs and symptoms deviate from normal, conduct remote evaluations (via built-in video counseling facilities), and use these to provide a faster feedback loop to modify treatment.
In the fiercely competitive field of telemedicine, it is clear that many of the early advances in RPM have solved medical conditions that are mainly cardiovascular or respiratory diseases by using a limited set of measurement equipment.
Therefore, there is still a lot of untapped potential to use RPM to evaluate and monitor other disease areas using many other tools.
Compared with traditional paper-and-pencil evaluation, computerized testing can provide many potential benefits, from increased measurement sensitivity to the prospect of self-managing testing and the automation of lengthy marking processes. In addition to all the other benefits of remote testing mentioned above, I believe this may completely change the long-term management of more and more diseases.
Not to mention that many diseases that doctors find difficult to understand—from ADHD to depression and chronic fatigue syndrome—do not have the potential for smart watches and other wearable devices to provide unique data insights.
Digital health seems to be at a turning point, and previously cautious practitioners have willingly embraced the new technology. Although this pandemic has brought various ills, it not only opened the door for clinical doctor-patient interaction in this fascinating field, but also showed that, depending on the situation, remote care is as effective as face-to-face care.
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Dr. Sina Habibi, co-founder and CEO of Cognetivity Neurosciences. Read Sina Habibi’s full executive profile here.
Dr. Sina Habibi, co-founder and CEO of Cognetivity Neurosciences. Read Sina Habibi’s full executive profile here.
Post time: Jun-18-2021