How Remote Patient Monitoring is Helping clinics bounce back?

The current pandemic has disrupted the healthcare system and has created panic among everyone. It has dramatically reduced face-to-face doctor consultations. The innovative virtual strategies are providing safe options to seek a doctor’s consultation. Covid-19 pandemic has proven that online physician consultations can be a better solution than in-person clinic/hospital visits. Healthcare systems worldwide are ensuring safe care to the patient with the help of various advanced technologies. In this perspective, remote health care services are at a boom with overall positive outcomes.

Currently, digital strategies are scaling up to enable contactless health care delivery. Telehealth promises better efficiency to accelerate its services and bounce back virtual health care post-pandemic. Telehealth services have greatly improved and are striving to provide excellent patient care outcomes. Virtual consultation includes a guideline-directed step-by-step process with real-time guidance from the healthcare provider.

Although the healthcare system has specific barriers in providing uninterrupted care to the patients, it has effective in-house solutions that bridge the gap between the health provider and the patient. Remote patient monitoring (RPM) is a patient-centred care platform that provides comprehensive care to patients remotely. RPM platform eases the health needs of the patients who are unable to visit a doctor’s office. After a few weeks of the pandemic hit the world, various digital strategies have come into the limelight to offer contactless consultations and healthcare delivery. The healthcare industry’s business models are evolving vastly and are focusing on primary health care practices remotely.

When telehealth and RPM are combined, they provide immense benefits by transforming the healthcare system in a better way to serve the people. Telehealth paves an easy way for doctor’s appointment and facilitates consultation in the comfort of the home environment. Covid-19 pandemic has witnessed how well telehealth and RPM solutions can handle the health crisis.

How did the clinics sustain during the pandemic?

There are many instances like a pandemic that kept the patients away from visiting the clinic or hospital. Remote health care saved the clinics from shutting down, and the health care providers could deliver uninterrupted, effective healthcare solutions to the patients. Virtual health care services by telehealth and remote patient monitoring helped the doctors and patients stay away from hospitals for non-emergency situations. The hospital clinical team provides virtual care where patients can get health care support from their home or remote place.

Virtual care benefits doctors and patients, where doctors can speak to their patients regularly and enquire about their health condition. With virtual care, patients can cut the commute costs and unnecessary diagnosis expenses that would incur during a hospital visit. Remote health care is highly beneficial for older people and disabled individuals who are physically challenged to travel to a clinic.

Provider-to-patient care setting at home

Remote patient monitoring is a technology-supported service that allows in-patient follow up remotely. The patient or the caregiver at home should be tech-savvy to manage remote patient monitoring services and follow the guidelines as directed by the healthcare provider. Remote patient monitoring is significantly supporting the healthcare system in many ways. It reduces the chances of spreading infection during such pandemic as the workforce is limited to a few people in the hospital premises. RPM allows managing thousands of patients from various places effectively.

Remote patient monitoring is a highly preferred and one of the most effective health management solutions that avoid the need for face-to-face consultation at doctor’s office and reduces the chances of hospital readmission. Furthermore, the health data recorded via the RPM platform helps to understand the patient’s history and provides critical insights to the doctor to prescribe the treatment.

The role of artificial intelligence and cloud computing are huge in remote patient monitoring in terms of capturing the data, storing, and retrieving the same when the doctor has to analyse the patient’s health condition. The use of these technologies in the healthcare system facilitates information exchange and helps in the interaction between the doctor and a patient. Remote patient monitoring devices are inbuilt with advanced technology that track and closely monitor the patient’s vitals and are recorded in a database for the doctors to analyse the readings and prescribe the treatment. RPM devices come with an alert system that helps the doctor closely monitor and check the deterioration in the patient’s vitals.

There is a hugely competitive environment among the RPM providers to provide high-quality health services to the patients. Remote patient monitoring includes the identification of falls and preventing further risks from it. Fall detection in the elderly becomes challenging, especially when staying alone without a caretaker or a family member. Fall detection devices constitute a significant part of remote health monitoring, especially with elderly patients. Wearable devices like wristwatches, skin patches alert the end-user with an alarm that indicates an emergency.