What is Telehealth?
The Telehealth service is designed to improve the quality of life of patients with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) and Chronic Heart Failure (CHF) through self awareness and self management of their condition. It also aims to reduce emergency admissions to hospital due to these specific conditions becoming unmanageable.
The service provides individualised support and care planning for patients to enhance their care management within a community setting through the use of technology. It is designed to not only ensure that conditions are monitored but to offer health promotion and disease prevention advice. This in turn will help with patient empowerment and encourage self management, thus reducing the reliance on attendance at hospitals or clinics for ongoing monitoring.
A Telehealth device, called a homepod, is installed in the patient’s home and typically connected to a telephone line or mobile phone network so that the data collected can be transferred to a central monitoring centre. Readings are often taken daily, but the frequency can vary and is determined by consultation between patient and clinician. Examples of readings include:
- digital thermometer
- weighing scales
- blood pressure cuff
- oxygen reader
- pulse reader
The readings are sent to a secure central monitoring control centre and if the readings are ‘outside’ the pre determined parameters for the individual patient then it could indicate a deterioration of their condition and an alert is raised for the clinician to contact the patient, however Telehealth is an enabler for patient self management so the onus is on the patient/carer to know what to do if their readings are outside the normal parameters (as detailed in their Telehealth patient plan).
Early intervention to change medication doses is one example, which could lead to the prevention of an emergency admittance.
If you would like more information please contact telehealth.project@dorset-pct.nhs.uk
