Getting under the influence of chronic disease is a serious health condition, but not having access to timely healthcare is even worse. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) falls under the same category. So, how patient and provider keeps track of the disease plays an important role in health management.
Let’s understand how technology can be utilized to impart significant healthcare in the COPD condition
Chronic inflammatory lung disease obstructs airflow from the lungs. It’s symptoms often don’t appear until significant lung damage has occurred, and they usually worsen over time, People with any kind of lung disease are constantly under severe threat of respiratory breakdown. Therefore people with COPD must have an emergency support system that provides them with an immediate, reliable and comforting source of support in times of need.
Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) is the top emerging healthcare solution, especially in the case of chronic lung disease management. RPM is described as remote monitoring and delivery of care where patient’s clinical information is routinely or continuously collected and processed, presented to the patient as well as healthcare provider, for feedback, triage, and intervention.
RPM has the potential to help patients with progressive lung disease to predict exacerbations and manage health conditions whenever and wherever required. It helps patients and providers reduce hospital re-admissions and improves the self-management of disease by providing quality healthcare at reduced costs and improved outcomes.
Utilizing a remote patient monitoring system for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)
The RPM technology is also utilized as a homecare system for assisted independent living, that facilitates health monitoring features, communication and social networking between users, as well as features for emergency response, with the support of helpdesk service. The system uses wireless medical sensors and wearables for vital signs and physical activity tracking. All medical information is securely stored in cloud infrastructure and data is managed and controlled by the user.
Pulmonary Disease’s patient access to RPM enables the following functionality
Vital Signs Monitoring and Personal Health Record (PHR): The patient is set to undergo health measurement with the use of appropriate sensors and wearable devices. The measurement obtained is automatically transmitted to the mobile or tablet and uploaded to the patient’s PHR. The patient can also view medical history on the tablet.
Videoconferencing: Patients can communicate with their doctors via videoconferencing. While ongoing videoconferencing they can also perform measurements of their vital signs and the results are displayed to both users.
Reminders: Patients or their doctors can set reminders, for health-related activities, such as doctor appointments, or non-medical tasks, such as daily activities and social engagements.
Emergency circumstance: In case of emergency, the patient can contact the service’s help desk, with a single touch, to receive assistance and medical advice from the doctor.
Patient Monitoring Parameters: For each patient, the doctor can set a schedule of daily health measurements. The system can also set automatic reminders for multiple patients. In case health data does not meet an acceptable range, an alert is sent to the doctor, as well as the help desk service.
Personal health record: The doctor can view the patient’s health record and update certain information, such as respiratory tract, pulmonology complaints, prescribed medications, and other health information. They can also choose to receive automated weekly reports for each patient, containing all new data in the patient’s PHR.
Speciality Electronic Health Record: Doctor can use pulmonary specialty EHR, which can cater to specific practice needs such as clinically-defined templates for common pulmonology complaints, pulmonology specific ICD and CPT codes that are used to capture accurate charges and quickly generate electronic claims at the point of care. Doctors can also customize templates according to their needs.
Benefits of using RPM for pulmonary disease:
- Improved patient outcomes
- Reduced need for in-person visits
- Better and timely disease management
- Patient empowerment
- Ease of use
- Predictability of exacerbations
The growing practice of digital health and telemedicine technology is encouraging the scope of remote healthcare in patients and providers. However, more user-friendly wearable, bio-sensors, mobile applications, and EHR/PHR would decrease the burden on provider and patient. The proper utilization of these remote monitoring devices will demonstrate improved clinical outcomes at much lower costs.
