Remote health monitoring is a unique way to keep track of a patient’s condition outside of the office. It allows medical professionals to gather data without additional in-person appointments.
Whether you need a refresher or you’re curious about how it could benefit your practice, here’s what you need to know about remote patient monitoring.
What Is Remote Health Monitoring?
Remote monitoring occurs outside of traditional healthcare settings. Typically, it’s used to collect data about a patient with “smart” devices that the person can use at home.
Physicians use remote health monitoring for many diseases and conditions, including:
- Diabetes
- Asthma
- Cancer
- Cardiac disease
- Sleep irregularities
- Pulmonary conditions
- Neurological disorders
- Perinatal care
- Malnutrition
- Weight loss/gain
- Elder care
However, there is an increasing use of digital monitoring for more acute concerns, like postoperative care. Remote devices also work well during public health emergencies or infectious disease outbreaks, such as COVID-19.
Remote Patient Monitoring Examples
Patient monitoring technology includes various devices provided to patients to collect health data. Some of the more common ones include:
- Sleep apnea monitors
- Smart inhalers
- Pulse oximeter
- Blood pressure monitors
- Glucose meters
- Heart rate monitors
- Smart scales
- Pregnancy monitors
- Spirometer
- Electrocardiogram monitors
Smartwatches and phones can also operate as monitors, allowing the person to use devices they’re already familiar with.
When using this technology, a patient may have to perform periodic self-testing. In other cases, the devices constantly record. Regardless, the monitors often send the data to the electronic health record automatically.
Benefits of Monitoring Patients at Home
Remote monitoring is helpful for medical professionals—and the patients themselves. For a practitioner, some of the advantages associated with the technology include:
- Timeliness: Access to a steady stream of health data can make it easier (and faster) to respond to any issues or concerning trends that arise.
- Prioritization: You can prioritize patient care needs by using the data to identify which are most urgent.
- Integration: Many devices can directly report data to electronic health records. This process can also make it easier for you to access the information.
- Disease reduction: Physicians can use remote monitoring to track a person’s health while keeping sick individuals out of the office. This option can help reduce the spread of disease during an outbreak and keep vulnerable people safe.
At-home monitoring technology also offers many benefits for the patients who use it. Ways it can help these individuals include:
- Engagement: Often, having direct access to their medical data helps people feel more engaged with their well-being and self-care. That can lead to behavior change that can prevent or reduce problems down the line.
- Communication: With easy access to health data, patients can raise questions or concerns to their doctor right away. Or, if a doctor notices something off in the person’s record, they can reach out quickly with the visuals to back it up.
- Health knowledge: The data collected with remote monitors does more than tell someone about their health — it shows them. Seeing how their data changes can help patients understand the impact that behavior or treatment has on their well-being.
- Convenience: At-home monitoring can eliminate extra doctor’s visits. It can also improve access to care by reducing the cost of transportation, missed work and childcare.
Although at-home patient monitoring can’t replace all in-person visits, it can often be a helpful supplemental tool.
If you’re curious about the latest advances in remote health tech, continuing medical education (CME) can help. Find in-person and online CME conferences on these topics (and more) today.