By HealthXL Team & Community
The HealthXL Sprint 2-part meeting series connects senior leaders across our community to solve the latest health challenges. In our most recent sprint we discussed integrating remote patient monitoring (RPM) into health systems and hospital workflows. In this blog we’ve pulled out the top takeaways from this series.
5 Key Recommendations
#1 Start small with clinical champions: To integrate RPM solutions into clinical workflows at hospitals, it's useful to have a clinical champion who is motivated to integrate such a solution. Hospitals manage enormous patient demand and RPM presents an opportunity to alleviate some of this pressure by allowing clinicians to discharge certain patients and monitor them remotely. Therefore, clinicians are often eager to incorporate such solutions into their workflow. Additionally, start small and focus on one patient population with RPM. Demonstrate the value of the solution within one specific patient population, then to wider clinical stakeholders across multiple patient populations, and eventually evolve to a centralized model with a command center to ensure economies of scale.
#2 Demonstrate the value proposition: RPM solutions are a significant investment, so it's important to show their value and the cost savings they can have long term. This can be shown in conditions such as heart failure or diabetes where RPM can reduce hospital admissions in these patient populations which in turn will reduce costs. Showing this value through a peer reviewed article can be beneficial. Additionally, showing value beyond traditional pain points such as reducing healthcare provider (HCP) burnout highlights the many other possible clinical and business opportunities.
#3 Consider a platform approach: Few health systems are interested in point solutions as they cost more, are hard to integrate and can be cumbersome for clinical staff logging into many different systems. Therefore, considering an integrated platform approach from the get-go is beneficial. To achieve this, starting in a place of strong interest or need (such as COPD, diabetes, or hypertension), can help gain valuable experience and insights that will support scaling across different conditions and use cases. Understanding some of the commonalities in patient flow and unified requirements across different indications can be leveraged to build an enterprise platform solution that enables an integrated experience, strengthens customer engagement and produces optimal results for the organization.
#4 Strive for patient-procured data from connected devices: Credibility and usability of data generated from non-connected devices (i.e. patient reported outcomes) is often an area of concern amongst HCPs. There is a preference for patient-procured data from connected devices which generally have higher rates of acceptance amongst these professionals. Accessibility issues are another factor of importance in data collection. Preferred solutions work through cellular and Bluetooth networks, are available in multiple languages, and allow adaptive access for patients’ functional impairments (i.e. big buttons). Combined, all of these components can help lead to improved levels of engagement and higher enrolment rates with solutions.
#5 Focus on EHR integration: Once nice to have, integration is now a must if one is to be successful at scale with any RPM solution. HCPs want solutions that offer rapid ease of use and are embedded into the clinical workflow seamlessly. They also want solutions which contextualize the population view and offer insights for clinical decision making. The best solutions offer a combination of risk stratification, customizable alerts, different dashboard views and integration into a single sign on EHR. Select vendors that can make integrating RPM into your health system a seamless experience for clinical staff.
Experts included: David Brennan (Director, Telehealth Initiatives, MedStar Health), George Pennacchi (Senior Associate Corporate Strategy, Twill), Jeff Wandzura (CEO, KEEP Labs), Karthick Kannan (Global Digital Health, Teva Pharmaceuticals), Nemanja Kovacev (MedTEch Expert, HTEC Group), Patrick Keenan (Digital Health / DTx BD & Commercialization, Astellas Pharma), Paula Sandrak (Digital Health Product Strategist, Bayer), Piotr Sokolowski (Chief Medtech Strategist, S3 Connected Health), Sarah Carroll (Vice President, AVIA), Thyago Ohana (Global Digital Care Transformation Strategist, UCB), Wayne Aston (Program Manager Digital Health, Emyria).
*All opinions are the participants’ own and do not necessarily reflect the stance of their respective employers.
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