Connected Health Research Advances During Pandemic

The need for remote care amid COVID-19 has re-emphasized the importance and use of remote monitoring for patient care.

The COVID-19 pandemic presented challenges and opportunities for health networks seeking to maintain care despite the stress on hospital resources and the need to maintain physical distance.

The healthcare industry has seen a widespread shift towards telehealth, accompanied by growing investment in capacity that enables remote monitoring of patient symptoms. As a general phenomenon, medical networks across America have made significant strides in research into the use of wearable devices to improve health outcomes.

At the GovernmentCIO Media & Research Military Health Summit Thursday, government and private sector officials discussed how their organizations have driven these advances in connected care. Much of this has depended on building existing networked care capacity, using the pandemic crisis as an opportunity to invest in the need for response measures.

“That is actually older than COVID. Three years ago we started remote monitoring at home with our heart failure patients and our complicated diabetics. We conducted a year-long clinical study at Madigan Army Medical Center and Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas with a cohort of approximately 200 patients to see if there was any effectiveness. It found we had better diabetic management with real-time interaction with the patients who had a nurse case manager year-round, "said Lt. Col. Antonio Eppolito, MD, chief of telemedicine for the Air Force.

While much of the advances in remote patient care have been made in military health organizations, federal technologists recognize that this capability is likely to be used in civilian health networks with increasing frequency and sophistication.

“If I take this into the future, I will see remote home monitoring with wearables as something that we will deal with more and more. Not just in the garrison, for the patient at home, ”said Eppolito.

Much of the impetus for these developments has come from monitoring not only the symptoms of heart disease and diabetes patients, but also monitoring the conditions of COVID patients who have contracted a novel disease whose symptoms and longer-term complications are still ongoing to be fully understood.

"The Army Veteran Medical Center actually has a pilot they are currently doing with remote patient monitoring primarily for COVID patients," said Dr. Simon Pincus, head of the Defense Health Agency's Connected Health Branch, monitor things like pulse oximetry, heart rate, temperature, lung function, and blood pressure. Things that would tell you if someone had to go back to the hospital right away. "

The ability to track a range of symptoms has made it possible to apply remote patient care to new conditions beyond the initial priority areas of diabetes and heart disease, suggesting a likely expansion of wearables and IOTs for medical treatment.

Nurses also recognize that integrating these advances in biometrics with predictive analytics and AI enables more sophisticated patient diagnosis so providers can identify when a new condition has emerged or a previously known condition has reached a point that requires personal attention . By combining this data with the modernization of electronic health records, providers can create a much more thorough medical history that can be used to design more accurate and effective care.

"One of the things the Defense Health Agency is rolling out is the MHS Genesis electronic health record, which will eventually be integrated with the DOD and VA health records too, so you can see records and integrated health technology for life," Pincus said. I think these will be valuable to patients and providers, and ultimately, all of this data will ultimately enable predictive analysis and potentially improve the quality of care our beneficiaries receive. "

Providers have also begun to see the applicability for elderly patients who may wish to receive hospice care and symptom monitoring from home to enable better care for the elderly.

“There are a lot of baby boomers out there and they want to age in their homes. And if you look a little further, you have ambient computing where you don't have to communicate with anything. It's only in your home. And you may have a video, you may have audio, you may have samples of what happened before - used from taking your medication to today's exercise? "Said Dr. Mitch Heroman, Chief Medical Officer at Optum Serve.

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