Outcome data for the remote patient monitoring over three years of over 1000 patients in Northern Ireland with a long-term chronic illness (abstract)

Steve Hards

And the headline results are:

  • 60% saving of COPD patient unplanned hospital admissions
  • 33% saving of CHF patient unplanned hospital admissions
  • 32% of patients escalated during ‘out of hours’
  • After a period of three years telehealth monitoring of (n=766 COPD patients) equalling some 3% of the Northern Ireland COPD population, the unplanned hospital admission rate for COPD patients reduced from 42% to 9%

“During the four-year programme…The data gathered involved clinical, technical and statistical information in order to determine patient utilisation, return on investment (ROI) information and programme outcomes not usually derived from most commercial telehealth ‘back-end’ web server solutions.”

This article, Outcome data for the remote patient monitoring over three years of over 1000 patients in Northern Ireland with a long-term chronic illness, has just been published in the International Journal of Integrated Care. With results like this being achieved in a contracted NHS environment ahead of the Whole System Demonstrator Programme (WSD), one has to ask if the WSD has been a colossal waste of time. By the time those results are published the telecare/telehealth world will have moved on and they risk being disregarded as irrelevant.

Heads-up thanks to Toni Bunting.

3 thoughts on “Outcome data for the remote patient monitoring over three years of over 1000 patients in Northern Ireland with a long-term chronic illness (abstract)”

  3. Although it is a complete and utter farce that the WSD results have not been published yet I believe that they will still be relevant to the Telehealth ‘should we/shouldn’t we’ debate.

    The results described above are as equally headline grabbing as those of the magic 4 bullet points from the WSD that came out a decade or so ago (sorry it just seems like that). although we will need to drill down because as we know Telehealth is not one box with lots of add ons – it is thousands of different boxes with add ons or not plus many different ways of providing a back end service.

    I think this is what is frustrating people that just want to buy a service off the shelf that does exactly what it says on the tin – we seem decades away from this and the people I am talking about are people sat in their own living rooms and people who are called or have become, by osmosis, ‘commissioners’. Everyone is in the same boat.

    Bring on the evidence but bring it now.

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