Individuals who struggle with chronic diseases, such as COPD and chronic heart failure, pose an exceptionally tough challenge for the healthcare system. The cost of helping patients manage these conditions is astronomical. The CDC estimates that 90% of the country’s $4-trillion health care bill originates from chronic care.
Of course, prevention is the best medicine for chronic health conditions. When they do occur—and they can occur quite often—the challenge becomes that of helping patients recognize and manage their symptoms. It’s something that requires ongoing vigilance.
Increased focus is being placed on developing wireless patient monitoring devices into care plans, which can serve as tools for streamlining chronic care and helping patients better manage their diseases at a lower cost.
These devices supply data that assist doctors in making real-time decisions on treatment, before a patient’s condition turns into an emergency. To date, those devices rely on patients taking their own measurements and reporting them to doctors. But new technological approaches now enable continuous monitoring—twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week—as a way of improving the efficiency of home health care. Patients benefit from a better quality of life and care that costs less to provide.
Continuous remote patient monitoring (CRPM) involves the use of wrist-worn wireless monitoring devices that feed patient vital signs to doctors automatically over wireless networks. These devices look much like the current breed of smartwatches, but they are not gadgets: they are clinical devices that capture and share data that’s hospital-grade quality, safely and without requiring patient action.
The promise of CRPM is growing with the integration of artificial intelligence, which can enable systems to make predictions about the future as a way of anticipating emergencies before they happen.
As a result, CRPM has the potential to expand the use of home care to provide more effective treatments, letting patients spend more time at home, while also saving money.
Wireless Monitoring and Home Care Today
Recent years have seen remarkable developments in producing medical devices that make it easy to capture the physiological parameters of a patient without requiring a visit to a doctor or hospital. These devices are small, sometimes worn on the body, and can measure many different elements of living, such as blood sugar, blood pressure, respiration, pulse, and sleep. According to Fierce Healthcare IT, health monitoring devices are now close to a $1-billion business.
Wireless patient monitoring devices can bring greater efficiency to health care. As the population ages, there are more patients than providers, particularly in the specialist category. Visits to doctor’s offices and hospitals are expensive, driving up costs unnecessarily.
The challenge with many of these devices is that they produce single data points. Patients are asked to take readings at specific times and communicate them to doctors. But they may forget, and sometimes, patients with chronic conditions are already in crisis before they even take their first measurement.
One way to make devices even more effective in home care is to expand them with technology that enables continuous remote patient care.
How CRPM Extends the Benefits of Home Health Care with Wireless Patient Monitoring Devices
A new breed of devices is changing the paradigm from a static model, where patients have to remember to take their blood pressure or measure their blood sugar, to something more dynamic.
CRPM is a capability built into a device that you can wear. It is the epitome of an Internet-of-Things device: always connected, always on, and always communicating with providers. CRPM devices stream feeds of patient data into patient record systems consistently, no matter where you are. Some might describe it as a virtual healthcare surveillance system, where doctors can send patients home but rest easy in the knowledge that they are still being watched.
One of the biggest benefits of CRPM is predicting when a patient may be susceptible to a negative health event.
The data streams help establish a baseline. When the data indicates a divergence from the baseline, alarms will sound, and doctors can step in with interventions, short of a trip to the emergency room.
How Oxitone Aids Home Care with CRPM
Oxitone is a leading innovator in developing wireless monitoring systems and devices that enhance patient care at home. The company’s Oxitone 1000M is the first wrist-worn device cleared by the FDA to measure patient vital signs and transmit them wirelessly to care teams. The data is captured continuously to enable doctors to make real-time decisions on care for patients with chronic conditions.
The Oxitone 1000M is easy to use for patients—it is comfortably worn on the wrist like a watch. But the device provides hospital-grade information and data security and provides one-click real-time access to clinical data such as:
- Pulse rate
- Heart rate variability (physiological stress)
- Physical activity
- Oxygen saturation
- Skin temperature
- Respiratory rate
The device can also assist with care for a large profile of conditions, including COVID-19, COPD, chronic heart failure, and sleep apnea.
The Oxitone 1000M is part of a larger system that integrates with cloud-based artificial intelligence (AI) tools. These provide medical intelligence, recognizing when a patient has diverged from their normal baseline. AI can also help improve compliance with treatments.
The 1000M offers several significant benefits. Patients get improved quality of life and peace of mind because they know that wherever they go, their doctors are keeping tabs on them.
The system also lowers system costs by reducing unnecessary emergency room visits and easing workloads on stressed health care doctors, nurses, and other professionals.
Here at Oxitone, we boost value-based healthcare by delivering extraordinary patient, clinical, and economical outcomes at reduced medical utilization and cost. Patients need a prompt response to emergencies. Physicians need an easy and timely follow-up with patients. Our mission is to transform chronic disease management and help save lives worldwide.
Let’s save lives together! To see how we help remote patient monitoring companies and physicians improve the management and care of high-risk patients, contact us today!