While medicine has historically focused on treating injuries and ailments, advances in medical technology increasingly enable healthcare providers to prevent disease and mitigate morbidity — using the power of remote patient monitoring. A growing variety of devices now allow healthcare professionals to collect real-time patient data to detect and even anticipate developments in symptoms, both within hospitals and other care settings, as well as for remote patients at home.
Continuous monitoring informs clinical decisions, assists in the management of chronic conditions, improves patient engagement, and equips practitioners to provide more personalised care for improved patient outcomes. Discover the potential of patient monitoring systems for your medical practice today, and give your patients the quality of care they deserve with JustSolve’s leading healthcare software solutions.
Types of Patient Monitoring Solutions.
1. Hospital Patient Monitors
Hospital monitors play an essential role in delivering quality care, tracking heart rate and other vital signs to determine patients’ respective health statuses throughout treatment. Only with real-time information-gathering from blood pressure monitors and other medical devices can hospital staff respond effectively at critical points in the healing process, and ensure patient safety for the duration of their stays.
2. Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM)
For those living with chronic diseases — such as HIV, endometriosis and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, among others — managing symptoms is a constant struggle, as they rarely enjoy on-demand access to medical expertise. Moreover, healthcare professionals cannot be reliably present for the daily experiences of chronically ill patients, and thus lose critical insights into patients’ specific needs and challenges.
Fortunately, remote patient monitoring or RPM programs record crucial symptom and general health data for making more informed decisions, including the adoption of new medications, the adjustment of dosages, and the review of treatment efficacy. Monitoring (RPM) measures have the added benefit of directly involving patients in their own healthcare journey, promoting long-term health outcomes by activating patient agency and providing a growing basis of actionable information.
3. Wearable Monitoring Devices
Advancements in miniaturisation and the internet of things (IoT) continue to empower people from all walks of life to take their health into their own hands, while providing a continuous supply of patient information to permitted healthcare professionals. Wearable monitoring devices give real-time measurements of a wide variety of indicators, including heart rate, blood pressure, sleep quantity and more, equipping patients to take immediate proactive self-regulatory steps in their diet, exercise, sleep and medication.
With a growing number of functionalities — including goal-setting, reminder alerts and cloud storage — wearable patient monitor devices play a major role in accelerating the development and magnifying the impact of patient monitoring systems.
Advancements in Patient Monitoring Technology.
1. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning
The ever-advancing field of artificial intelligence (AI) continues to drive innovations in every sector, and healthcare is only just beginning to taste its transformative potential. The vast processing powers of AI tools equip healthcare professionals with life-saving predictive capabilities, extrapolating from statistical trends to provide users with critical health data, informing more timely and more personalised patient care.
2. Telehealth Integration
Telehealth refers to an increasing number of synergistic digital health services aimed at increasing the accessibility, safety and efficacy of medical care. When integrated with patient monitoring systems, these services can coordinate remote consultations with real-time data sharing for more efficient, more responsive and more impactful healthcare interventions.
3. Data Analytics
Virtual care extends beyond remote consultations and patient records. With modern data analytics, patient monitoring systems provide a comprehensive foundation of accurate information to drive more effective medical decision-making and create treatment plans tailored to the specific needs of individual patients.
Comparative Analysis of Monitoring Solutions.
The Vista from Dräger
Dräger’s comprehensive patient monitoring system allows medical professionals to optimise workflows, prevent and control infections, and enhance care across perioperative, emergency, neonatal and adult intensive care settings. The Vista seamlessly integrates into a hospital’s existing IT network, offering customisable parameters and modules for all connected workstations, and scales with the organisation for long-term benefits.
The IntelliVue Information Centre from Philips
The familiar menus and layout of Microsoft Windows, as well as its expansive Help features, make the IntelliVue Central Monitoring System an accessible choice for health organisations focused on ease of adoption. Highly navigable screens and windows allow providers to view health data — including waveforms, trends, alarms and a wide range of numerics — for multiple patients via secure web portals. The system connects to both wired and wireless patient monitors, and offers clinical support tools to assist healthcare professionals at every step on a patient’s treatment journey.
Monitoring, the Smart Way.
Remote patient monitoring systems gather personal health data in homes, hospitals and other care settings, driving more informed clinical decision-making and more responsive, individualised care. They equip providers to make more accurate diagnoses, anticipate critical developments and prevent potential crises. Patients with chronic conditions use wearable self-monitoring devices to manage their symptoms independently and promote long-term wellbeing.
Moreover, remote monitoring improves operational efficiency, enhancing care delivery and increasing the size of the addressable patient market, allowing medical practices to treat a larger cohort of patients and grow their revenue. In conjunction with telehealth integrations, advanced data analytics and ever-evolving machine learning tools, remote monitoring innovations are expected to further transform healthcare technology.
Contact JustSolve, the specialists in custom healthcare software development, to explore the potential of remote monitoring for your organisation, and lead your medical practice into the future.
