Remote monitoring —— The beginning of the ‘Smart Health’

The increasing cost pressures from hospitals and health systems, as well as the prevalence of chronic diseases, all need future innovations in remote monitoring to provide 24/7 real and measurable health data to both the patients and healthcare institution.

Such kind of innovations actually has developed on the way. For example, the CardioMEMS HF System from Abbott can be implanted directly into the pulmonary artery through a minimally invasive procedure for remotely monitoring the heart’s performance. It transmits information wirelessly to the physician, who can adjust the treatment plan if needed, even before patients feel symptoms and without requiring follow-up appointments or hospitalizations.

On the other hand, people also have gradually engaged in remote monitoring and virtual healthcare. According to a new estimate from Berg Insights, more than 7 million patients now benefit from remote monitoring as an integral part of their care routines, and the use of remote monitoring is expected to continue its growth at a compound annual growth rate of 47.9 percent to reach 50.2 million by 2021 (mHealth and Home Monitoring, 2017).

For future development, there are two points need to be paid attention: first, when developing new products, the core designing idea is to use the data along with advances in machine learning to deliver personalized precision therapies. Second, the data come from multiple sources and technologies need to be connected in one coherent network with a common language to achieve the device connectivity.

Reference:

Berg Insight. (2017). mHealth and Home Monitoring [Ebook]. Retrieved from http://www.berginsight.com/ReportPDF/ProductSheet/bi-mhealth8-ps.pdf