Andrew Davies, CEO of RWG Mobile, discusses how preventing long-term conditions through technology-enabled care is essential to reducing the care gap.
The COVID-19 pandemic changed not only the way we live our day-to-day lives, but the way we view and use healthcare.
The belief that the best care was provided face-to-face and involved a mandatory walk to the doctor’s surgery had to be reevaluated – care could now be provided online, in our homes, and it did not need us to go anywhere.
The advance and, above all, the acceptance of digital has naturally led to the question: what now? What path must healthcare and social care take to remain sustainable, practical, and compassionate for both short-term patients and people with chronic illnesses?
Tech advancement has been profound on so many levels, especially when it comes to sensors – home blood pressure monitors and pulse oximeters, single-lead home ECG devices – used to check sinus rhythm and atrial fibrillation – glucose monitoring, and of course – smartwatches.
Medical wearables are all around us facilitating, to an extent, remote monitoring. But what is the missing link between advanced sensor tech and true digital care?
The answer is integration. It is essential for caring organisations to implement technology-assisted care to address the care gap and reduce the likelihood of preventable long-term chronic and debilitating conditions – especially within the population of older people.
Elderly woman talking with a doctor while holding hands at home and wearing face protective mask.
Despite the proliferation of tech sensors that facilitate monitoring, the lack of an integrated care platform is a setback to achieving digital care that extends older people’s independence.
Single point applications are useful in gathering data. However, they fail to pull it all together and support medical professionals in drawing a holistic picture of the service user’s health.
Technology can notice and measure a change in a person’s behaviour but can’t account for other factors that may be affecting their daily routine: for example if they are ill, or just feeling a bit low or lonely.
That’s why there is a need for an integrated platform that can contribute to monitoring, analysing, and improving the well-being and independent living of the ageing population.
In order to achieve that connected network, that integration, healthcare and social care need to embrace a new kind of digital platform: one that brings together all the information from sensor tech and generates insights that in turn help power new workflows and interventions.
Not only will it provide masses of specialised data, it will connect the cared-for, the carers and the kinship carers (family and friends) – everyone gets to sit at the table and improve communication between all parties.
The generic term for this is Health-Platform-as-a-Service (HPaaS) – and this is the direction innovative healthcare must head for.
Falls and fall-related injuries class as a common and often serious problem for older people.
In England alone in 2021, there were more than 216,000 emergency hospital admissions in the 65+ age group. The annual costs for addressing these falls and resulting injuries for the NHS is estimated at £2.3b.
Older woman using laptop in an online consultation with her doctor.
Let’s play through some scenarios to see how an integrated platform can enable reactive and proactive treatments.
Imagine that a vulnerable person has a fall at home, a sensor can detect the fall and the platform can automate action.
A first step might be to initiate a video call with a carer, popping up a familiar face on a standard TV set. The next might be a call to a paramedic or securing physical help from friends and neighbours. Then, the professional carers can analyse the data collected before, during, and after the fall to find the cause for the fall – maybe low blood sugar or abnormal blood pressure?
Our conversations with medical professionals have also indicated the need for proactive technology – one that anticipates and prevents crises.
Movement sensors, locations awareness technology, collection of patterns, such as understanding heating and lighting behaviours, supplementary information from wearables including heart rate, oxygen levels and blood sugar levels and pop-up quizzes about mood and medication can be collected and analysed with the help of AI to portray a detailed wellness picture of the cared-for individual.
Actions can then occur – prompt a video call from a professional or family member, for example. That could not only help individuals with their medical conditions, but will provide a way to combat loneliness – a serious and challenging problem for elderly people who live independently.
Health platforms provide a unique service: it’s a connected care community, where people are taken care of digitally, but are simultaneously provided with means to communicate with kinship carers and participate in social events organised by professional carers.
It is vital that remote patient management technology must enable support for people in the community to self-manage their long-term health conditions to achieve the best outcomes for their health and well-being and to reduce the care gap.
Health platforms are a valuable toolbox that brings remote care to another level.
