Healthcare IT News has recently introduced a new partnership, stressing out the importance of health monitoring for providers. The Medical University of South Carolina made an 8-year, $36 million contract with Philips to install, integrate and manage patient monitoring systems. As caregivers invest into inpatients’ health tracking, we see the next complementary step in monitoring ambulatory patients, especially those with chronic conditions.
To make this step, providers can’t use the inpatient monitoring concept as it is. Still, taking the idea and elaborating it in more patient-centric direction, we will find the answer. Going mobile. Let’s review why and how does it work.
Why mobile monitoring is a thing
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A hospital’s software processes massive amounts of health data aggregated from different sources, which supposes a team of caregivers manually creating tons of records during regular medication delivery (one pill – one record), examination and other procedures. Basic vitals to record and analyze include weight, blood glucose, pulse, blood pressure, temperature and meal intake.
As these vitals are quite basic, an ambulatory patient can also measure and record them independently, creating a one more data source – patient-generated health data (PGHD). What’s problematic here is caregivers get one more data source to integrate into their system, yet this flow supports better care delivery, doesn’t require staff’s direct efforts and is no less informative. In other words, providers don’t send groups of nurses to the patient’s doorstep, asking, measuring, recording and inputting.
All this work the patient conveniently does themselves via a… mobile application. Because it is the most convenient way to reach out to patient. And it willingly transfer the collected data to his or her caregiver. Additionally, this smart box can send push notifications to remind the individual about missed measures, medications and procedures.
This way, providers are able not only to evaluate their inpatient’s health status, but also track his or her condition at home and recognize the crisis is near even before the early symptoms reveal themselves.
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Start with chronic condition patients
We can’t think of a better way to see the results of ambulatory patient monitoring faster and get more dramatic population health outcomes, than to use it for chronic diseases. Chronic care management software allows to keep in touch with patients and support their daily tracking needs.
Chronic patients are naturally more motivated to measure their vitals and share them with their caregivers. The reason is major part of them needs to self-check regularly, whether the provider gets this data or not. But if a patient understands that his or her health status changes will be noticed, they get a hope to a better life without risks of complications and exacerbations. One more point in favor.
Afterword
We are not opposing the inpatient monitoring to ambulatory version. They are just the different sources of patient’s condition history, so they can complement each other. For example, when a patient with chronic disease is admitted into a hospital, the inpatient monitoring takes place to ensure better care delivery. When a person is discharged, he or she shouldn’t turn into a data void. A provider can and should connect with a patient further, and ambulatory monitoring is an option.
