World’s largest test of remote monitoring for chronically ill underway
According to an exclusive story in the London Times, Electronics giant Royal Philips Electronics announced this week that it has launched a major home telehealth research project. Calling it the world’s largest trial of remote monitoring of home-based, chronically ill patients, it will attempt to learn how telehealth can help control growing healthcare costs for providers and payers.
The trial, underway in Newham, United Kingdom, involves 400 patients suffering from illnesses such as diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease, according to Malcolm Hart, director of Philips’ British medical business. The patients will be monitored at home via diagnostic equipment linked by broadband internet connections to local hospitals and clinics.
The Dutch company is hoping to prove to the U.K.’s National Health Service that it can stem the mounting financial burden of institutional care by using high-tech diagnostic equipment linked by the internet. Newham is a low-income East London borough.
Patients are able to test their own blood pressure or blood oxygen level and send the data in an electronic message to staff at the Primary Health Trust.
As Philips gathers and published results of its theory that home telehealth produces a significant cost-benefit by monitoring patients with chronic conditions in their own homes rather than in long-term care facilities and hospital outpatient departments, HCTR will track the study’s progress and report on findings.
Hart said, “What we are trying to do is to avoid readmissions and trips to [the Emergency Department]. If a patient is readmitted to hospital it costs about £2,000.”
