Digital monitoring is helping reduce admissions to hospital for patients with heart conditions and helping them stay in their own home. Using a new digital platform, we can identify deteriorating patients at risk of admission and monitor them whilst they recover in their home environment.
The new app, originally developed by Dignio in Norway, is being used to monitor a variety of long-term conditions through the regular collection of a variety of vital signs, using medical devices. It focuses on giving patients more knowledge about their disease, as well as more tools for self-management to slow disease progression and reduce preventable admissions.
The system also helps outpatients. Rather than having to wait to return to clinic for their assessment, the system can potentially pick things up sooner. Data, such as a patient’s weight and blood pressure, is fed back to the clinical team, using remote monitoring devices that are paired to the patient’s smartphone app.
The app relays the measurements in real-time to our 'self-care monitoring platform' via the patients’ home or mobile network, where it is immediately visible and accessible for clinicians, carers and community care staff.
The system, which effectively places patients into ‘Virtual Wards’, where they can be monitored by a specialist nurse, doesn’t replace face-to-face appointments, but means they can potentially happen less frequently and at the most appropriate moment.
Patients in their homes, across the whole of Manchester and beyond, can be monitored from a single screen using software called ‘Dignio Prevent’ by a single ward nurse. An alert appears on the system to flag up any reading taken by the patient, their loved one or carer, which falls outside an acceptable range. This immediately flags up any signs or patterns of the patient getting worse, which indicates that they may require an intervention before their next hospital visit.