Because of the growing demand for chronic disease management and enhanced post-acute care, remote patient monitoring was in the works even before the COVID 19 pandemic. However, as a result of the pandemic, RPM technology has risen to the top of the priority list for both patients and clinicians. Hospitals are embracing digital health care technology in greater numbers. RPM has several advantages. Doctors use this technology to provide the best possible care to high-risk patients. Remote monitoring is expected to overtake in-person monitoring shortly.
RPM is the act of keeping track of a patient's health without physically being present. Essentially, the use of communication technologies has presented professionals with a revolutionary approach for providing greater medical care remotely.
Remote patient monitoring: A Comprehensive Guide
For a long time, the concept of remote patient monitoring has been emerging. The number of customers has been steadily increasing. COVID, on the other hand, has adjusted the growth rate to exponential. Using new technology, several remote monitoring solutions have been developed. As a result, SISGAIN has been able to assist a large number of clients. A virtual visit to the doctor is nothing compared to remote patient monitoring. This connected care is ongoing, and it has had a significant impact on healthcare delivery.
The remote Patient monitoring program is the ideal answer for post-acute care at home as well as for chronically ill patients, and remote monitoring technologies have evolved in response to the need for digital healthcare. To screen high-risk individuals for COVID 19, new technologies have been developed. Quarantined patients and healthcare professionals are included. In addition, back-to-office solutions are being developed. This will make it easier for organizations with a large workforce to run their operations smoothly.
A growing percentage of patients want to be monitored remotely. This is because the advantages have been observed by several people. Heart rate, blood pressure, oxygen levels, and blood sugar levels can all be monitored remotely. As a result, the patients are willing to have someone monitor their health from afar. Human interaction is not replaced by remote monitoring. It is, in reality, a supplement to real-life encounters. It is utilized as a tool to assist those who are grieving or depressed by providing them with access to virtual counseling sessions. As a result, technology is used to bring people together rather than isolate them.
Due to rapid improvements in mobile technology, remote patient monitoring programs are likely to increase at a rate of 10% or more in the next years. Things are changing quickly, and elements such as ambient intelligence, machine learning, and artificial intelligence (AI) are all poised to put remote monitoring solutions ahead of the curve.
Integrating HL7 Standards with Remote patient monitoring program
HL7 standards establish common guidelines for better data sharing among medical practitioners, organizations, and patients. To keep their management, diagnostic, and treatment services functioning, large healthcare providers typically rely on several IT platforms. For example, a typical hospital would use a Hospital Information System, an EMR (Electronic Medical Record), a RIS (Radiology Information System), etc. These systems all collect and generate data, but the diverse data formats they utilize hinder them from communicating effectively with one another.
Different data formats and transmission protocols are invariably used by legacy IT systems established by different software providers like SISGAIN. Some of them come with built-in data interpreters, but others may not, necessitating time-consuming manual entry. Medical organizations can achieve comprehensive interoperability across all of their data interchange methods by adhering to the HL7 standards. In an emergency, doctors must respond quickly. The patient's allergies, current medications, and treatment history must all be promptly accessible. By addressing incompatibilities in data formats and reducing query times between systems, HL7 data integration can substantially speed up the decision-making process.
For reference or research purposes, it's common to need to share data with third-party healthcare software or other medical facilities. Through HL7-FHIR integration via web APIs, HL7 overcomes the gap in data interchange interoperability. The newly created standard focuses on data formats utilized by mobile applications, such as JSON and XML, rather than clinical data integration. When sharing sensitive patient information, another worry is healthcare data security. Although the current HL7 standards and protocols do not enforce a unified security strategy, their specifications allow for the rapid development of safe, protected data systems. HL7 makes it easy to create HIPAA-compliant applications in particular.
Patients nowadays have grown to expect a certain degree of care, and one of their top expectations is remote patient monitoring to get their health evaluated, diagnosed, and analyzed. The number of digital health applications and personal health devices is increasing, ranging from wearable heart monitors to insulin pumps. HL7 standards establish a foundation for the long-term data ecosystem required to enable the growing sharing of medical data. The use of an HL7 interface in medical centers allows for more efficient data acquisition, storage, and processing. Medical professionals may focus on giving better care to their patients without being burdened by administrative duties.