EXCLUSIVE: How technology can support people living with chronic disease at home
Deploying technology effectively can support people with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) to live at home in their community for longer, and enable inclusive, accessible and innovative care to be delivered. Gavin Bashar, UK Managing Director at Tunstall Healthcare, discusses how technology can be used to better support people living with COPD at home and enable more preventative models of care.
By Gavin Bashar
As our population ages there is a corresponding increase in the prevalence of chronic diseases, which are major causes of morbidity and mortality. Chronic disease accounts for 40 per cent of hospital admissions and 75 per cent of hospital bed days, as well as leading to additional demand for residential care places1.
An estimated 1.2 million people are living with diagnosed COPD2, and the number of people who have had a diagnosis of COPD has increased by 27 per cent in the last decade, from under 1,600 to nearly 2,000 per 100,0002.
With more people being diagnosed with COPD, it’s important that our health and social care services continue to innovate so that they are able to cope with the growing number of people living with COPD and other chronic diseases.
Using technology to support people at home
Deploying technology effectively can support people with COPD to live at home in their community for longer, and enable inclusive, accessible and innovative care to be delivered. Digital health technologies such as telehealth (Remote Patient Monitoring) present a diverse range of offerings, but two common threads are their accessibility and scalability.
Access to technology empowers communities and individuals, and can be used to support people to self manage their chronic health conditions within their own homes. The ability to offer managed services and scalable solutions through technology will allow us to address the health needs of our population, and enable services to provide a more integrated approach. This in turn will also support professionals in putting citizens at the heart of decisions made about them and their care.
Digital solutions, including telehealth, can deliver transformation that supports services that are designed around patients, and keeps them out of hospital. They can also enable staff to work more efficiently, reduce bureaucracy and enable them to identify changes in people’s health and wellbeing at an early stage.
By engaging with people living with COPD, we can ensure that the tech solutions being used are appropriate, accessible, practically useful and therefore are less likely to be abandoned.
COPD and technology in practice
A telehealth pilot project was undertaken in County Wexford in 2021, overseen by a multi-agency Stakeholder Group, which set out to provide a 12-week telehealth intervention to 50 patients with a chronic illness.
The objectives of the pilot project were to establish a proof of concept for the provision of a telehealth service for three identified chronic conditions (Chronic Heart Failure, Diabetes and COPD).
Telehealth equipment was provided to the patients. ‘myMobile’ is a patient app which enables self-management and monitoring and receives readings from medical devices such as blood pressure monitors, thermometers and pulse oximeters. ‘triageManager’ is a clinical management software platform which enables clinical and service teams to monitor patients remotely.
Patients were highly engaged with the project, with 98 per cent of readings recorded. There were also low levels of attrition which were partly due to the support with any queries, and reminders to take readings. The Wexford telehealth pilot has attracted international interest thanks to its success and has proven that Ireland is an exemplar for promoting technology at the heart of healthcare provision.
Thanks to the success of the first phase, a second phase has commenced, covering five counties and 250 patients.
For more information on telehealth and how it can support people living with COPD in their own home, visit www.tunstall.co.uk/telehealth-solutions.
References
1 Government of Ireland National Risk Assessment 2019
2 British Lung Foundation
