Remote patient monitoring has become the corner store for care practices of the modern age. The assistance of smart technology has made it possible for hospitals struggling with resource constraints to keep up with the surging needs of the industry. Moreover, Remote patient monitoring shattered barriers and shortened the gap between patients and their patients like never before. We know why RPM is popular, but what you may not be familiar with is where it’s headed. Let’s define what the future holds for remote patient monitoring as we discuss health devices and trends shaping this service and its auxiliary technologies.
Trend: Personalized Care Managers
For anyone whose worked in the medical industry for any amount of time, you’ll agree that data has become a huge monster that many practices struggle to keep under leash. With poor UI and data obscurity afforded by legacy systems, this has resulted in the following consequences:
- Medical errors
- HIPPA and security violations
- Inefficient doctor workflows
- Poor coordination of care and much more
To tackle these challenges of data silos, remote patient monitoring providers are creating hands-off personalized care managers meant to be the first line of data remediation. For example, Aura Health’s RPM program includes the care platform, UNICA. This care manager enables facilities to onboard or add new patient entries into their database with ease while affording a convenient solution to keep tabs on patients.
Furthermore, UNICA offers the capability for real-time patient compliance enforcement by way of audio and messaging communication.
Health Device: Pulse Oximeter
A pulse oximeter, or pulse ox, for short, has been a mainstay in remote patient services regardless of the revolutions in technology. We have come a long way since 1942 when the world’s maiden portable pulse oximeter first came into being, and while the technology has gotten slicker or more compact, much of the operating principle has remained the same.
So what can a pulse ox detect? Providing a non-invasive technology to measure oxygen saturation within the blood, pulse oximeters are among the most popular tools implored by most RPM services. These handy tools enable care facilities to get ahead of events and diseases such as
- Asthma
- COPD
- Heart failure
- Heart attack
- Lung Cancer and more
Pulse oximeters have been around since the early 20th century and they are the past, present, and future of RPM services everywhere.
Trend: AI tools to Augment Human Insight
We need not look far for the applications of AI in healthcare, as we have a great example much closer to home. At Aura Health, our digital health solutions is also harnessing the power of artificial intelligence to keep tabs on patient vitals and patterns as they change.
Human effort can only do so much to track valuable patient metrics as they fluctuate over time. AI tools such as our own are augmenting human-based workflows to provide AI-driven insights and data. This is helping to shore up human flaws such as fatigue and miscalculations that can taint the diagnosis of the patient’s condition. With the ability to prompt medical intervention by offering reminders in case a technician doesn’t pick up on threshold violations, these AI tools are proving a secondary layer of quality control.
Furthermore, AI tools also assist in the visualization of data trends, thus ensuring the better identification of patterns that a physician may miss otherwise. Overall, artificial intelligence is one of the primary drivers for intelligent, accurate, and automated health analytics that are quickly becoming the order of the day.
Health Device: Blood Pressure Monitors
What is a RPM blood pressure monitor? True to its name, this device enables physicians to track a patient’s blood pressure. More specifically, these devices record arterial pressure as the heart goes about its business.
Some of the most common types of BP monitors that remote patient monitoring services implore today include:
- Digital monitors
- Aneroid monitors
- Column monitors
Digital and aneroid monitors in particular have gained increasing popularity with Remote patient monitoring service providers to enable home-based monitoring, which is one of the primary goals of RPM programs at large. With at-home BP tracking through wearables like blood pressure cuffs, physicians can better understand home dynamics that influence the patient’s condition and can make proactive changes about the wearer’s medication and treatment at large.
Trend: RPM Use Cases Expansions
Since its inception, remote patient monitoring technology has been quite restricted in terms of its workflow applications. But this isn’t a shortcoming on the part of the technology but rather conventions and familiarities of how RPM has been leveraged since.
Traditionally, remote patient monitoring has been called upon for the management of various long-term illnesses, and most commonly it has become the go-to for caring for patients with cardiac issues like arrythmias. RPM has also become synonymous with other more “mainstream” chronic illnesses such as diabetes, pulmonary conditions, and hypertension as well.
However, care facilities of the modern age are starting to think beyond the box, harnessing the technology to manage conditions that don’t usually pop to mind initially at the mention of RPM. This expansion of use case has now seen RPM also becoming handy for managing:
- Behavioral health problems
- COVID-19, which has become a new-age chronic illness
- Mental health conditions
- Sleep apnea
- Obesity, etc.
Health Device: Weight Scale
When managing long-term chronic illnesses, weight fluctuations can help physicians derive health implications, in terms of whether the patient’s condition is improving or deteriorating. It is for this reason that weight scales have become a popular health device for remote patient monitoring services.
Scales have become an especially important asset in the self-management of obesity, a condition that has itself been shown to increase the risk of heart disease, with one study reporting a 50% elevated probability of developing atrial fibrillation compared to individuals in an average weight class.
Modern RPM solutions are reliant upon wireless weight scales, typically powered by Bluetooth technologies with SIM capabilities to transmit this data to a physician or technician’s workflow.
RPM is Experiencing Lift Off
Remote patient monitoring market trends are also exhibiting a positive trajectory this year. The market has grown tremendously from a value of $25.3 billion and Fortune Business Insights estimates that, by 2028, this market size will exceed $101 billion. In a nutshell, RPM is set to continue to infiltrate the medical industry to even greater lengths, and it will soon become a necessity for players in the healthcare scene. To get remote patient monitoring services that are always ahead of the curve, contact Aura Health today.
is Aura’s proprietary digital healthcare platform
