Remote Patient Monitoring: The Answer to Chronic Disease Management?

When it comes to efficient, innovative healthcare that works for today’s patients, we have to turn towards digitised support and the advancements of remote patient monitoring. Digital healthcare has been gaining huge momentum in terms of patient care and chronic disease management, greatly reducing mortality rates, improving care, and contributing to future research and development across the board.

From my position within this great emergence of digital healthcare, I can see great potential for remote patient monitoring to develop upon this. Having truly blown up over the last few years, in part because of the pandemic and the adaptations we have made to living within its confines, I believe remote patient monitoring will soon be offering some incredible advancements - both in terms of patient care, and company investment. I’d like to take the time here to open the conversation and really introduce you to this space, giving some sense to sensationalism.

Where does RPM fit in the wider Digital Health spectrum?

The broad scope of digital health includes categories such as mobile health (mHealth), health information technology (IT), wearable devices, telehealth and telemedicine, and personalised medicine.  

Remote patient monitoring breaks fierce new ground across the digital healthcare space, transmitting patient data to healthcare teams from either automatic collation and transfer or personal reporting from the patient themselves. This data alerts providers of early signs that may require adaptive care plans or further intervention, using historical track records and time-based monitoring to identify potential health problems. This practice enables optimum clinical decision making and reduced hospital admissions, the latter being key during times when infection prevention is at the forefront (here comes that word again... i.e Covid).  

The patient benefits to RPM are quite clear to see, but from the perspective of providers the reduction in upfront care costs, in addition regular updates to CPT codes which allow further reimbursement per patient, makes for an easy implementation decision.

When Remote Patient Monitoring Meets Chronic Disease Management.

According to the CDC, chronic disease affects at least 6 in every 10 Americans and with the estimated $3+ trillion spent on chronic care annually in the US, a more cost effective solution feels increasingly urgent. We know that many of these chronic diseases are best managed by consistent regular monitoring. As lifestyle, genetic and environmental factors combine to increase the rate of those suffering from chronic diseases, today’s estimates suggest that just over a quarter of the American population, or 70.6 million US patients, will be using RPM tools by 2025.  

As the healthcare industry continues to refocus post-pandemic, placing more value on patient-centric, value-based care at less cost to the individual, remote patient monitoring programs look to be essential to the future of efficient and sustainable healthcare.  

Companies Leading The Way.

Kiddo

Current industry leaders are truly incorporating remote patient monitoring into their offering with great success. Kiddo, for example, provides monitoring devices for children with chronic illnesses, currently awaiting FDA clearance. The Kiddo platform provides constant monitoring for the estimated 19 million children in the U.S with a range of chronic conditions including asthma, congenital heart disorders, diabetes, and autism. Their monitoring device is a discreet wrist-worn wearable with five built-in sensors to track heart rate, body temperature, movement, perspiration, and bloody oxygen levels.  

The opportunities Kiddo’s product provides to prevent healthcare emergencies and improve a child’s quality of life are huge. Once FDA clearance is approved, they look set to make great strides within the industry, and strongly establish themselves as a future healthcare giant. 

Health Recovery Solutions

Meanwhile, Health Recovery Solutions provides a clinically-enabled comprehensive suite of healthcare solutions, with a central focus on patient needs and comfort. Their solutions offer truly effective remote patient monitoring to patient populations across the healthcare spectrum. Grounding remote monitoring in the foundation of their working practices, they routinely see a reduction in hospital readmissions, improved patient satisfaction scores, and decreased clinician workloads - seeing a great boost in sustainable healthcare provision for all.  

After being named "Best in KLAS Research" for remote patient monitoring and telehealth offerings for the 3rd year running, last month the Hoboken, NJ based company were also announced as a Top 5 Connected Care Platform by AVIA. The recent addition of Kimberly O’Loughlin as CEO signals an intention to accelerate their product offering, and continue to provide market leading patient engagement & monitoring solutions for years to come. Watch this space... 

Memora Health

As chronic disease management has become one of the greatest struggles in the healthcare industry in recent years, it has been truly heartening to see the ingenuity of healthcare companies working to meet this demand and improve patient wellbeing. Manav Sevak, co-founder and CEO of Memora Health, recognised the need “to navigate the entirety of the journey for [the] patient, and then to empower their care teams to be able to actually monitor how they’re performing and support them”. 

After a recent funding round, Memora have raised $40 million to develop complex care support via remote patient monitoring, now serving patients across the chronic disease spectrum, integrating with existing healthcare organisations to offer virtual care plans, reporting, and remote patient management. Their efforts have seen them partner with Mayo Clinic, Penn Medicine, and Edward Elmhurst Health - and truly forge a space for themselves as a trusted authority in the healthcare space.  

Preparing For The Future of Chronic Disease Management.

Whilst there can be a lot of noise in the digital healthcare space and we can find it difficult to make sense of sensationalism, it’s clear that remote patient monitoring is becoming a defining factor in sustainable and effective chronic disease management.  

As a tool of empowerment for patients, and a method of comprehensive data collection, remote patient monitoring is sure to refocus the digital healthcare space. With medical heavyweights and industry funders alike making a definitive statement of their support of RPM so early in the movement, it’s a particularly pertinent time to be reassessing your offering, and creating a future-proofed digital healthcare space. When we look to industry leaders, we see chronic disease management and remote patient monitoring really do go hand in hand.

I'll certainly be keeping an eye on opportunities for companies as this space continues to develop, and technologies adapt. Want to discuss the future of RPM in some more detail with me? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Drop me a message at Nathan.Riley@medical-cm.com or connect with me on LinkedIn to chat!