
Taking care of your health is crucial. But times are also changing even in the healthcare industry. Recently, most especially now, the need for so-called home health monitoring has earned the spotlight. As people are continuously advised to stay at home at much as possible, home health monitoring systems prove to be essential. They are critical in ensuring patients get the best services for their health.
This article will introduce you to home health monitoring, the importance of this system, and the most common devices for remote patient monitoring. If you are currently looking for more information about home health monitoring devices, you can find it here. Let us begin.
Home Health Monitoring Defined
Home health monitoring is a revolutionary and game-changing virtual care technology and innovation that allows patients to receive clinical monitoring services right from their homes. Essentially, this is a “hospital-in-the-home” technology.
A home health monitoring system is known to employ telecommunications and information technology to monitor or keep track of a patient’s health at home and guarantee the best action will be made. Patients then receive gadgets to measure and send vital signs, including pulse, glucose level, blood pressure, blood oxygen level, and weight, to clinicians.
Furthermore, this home health monitoring system offers various options to supplement the traditional treatment among patients. Also, this solution lowers healthcare costs and helps the hospital improve the treatment process.
Top 3 Reasons Why Hospitals Should Employ The Hospital In The Home Program
Hospital in-home technology offers admitted care right at the comfort of the patient’s home or any other suitable location.
Patients can choose this option if health institutions can deliver treatment safely at home. More so, patients are not charged anything extra if they join this system.
Basically, a hospital in the home technology refers to a solution concerning remote patient monitoring, a viable alternative to inpatient says. Allied health professionals, nurses, and doctors may offer care, with more home services provided as needed.
Here are the top three reasons hospitals must employ integrated health monitoring systems at home.
1. Healthcare Providers Can Utilize Home Health Monitoring To Offer More Efficient And Effective Treatment To Patients In Their Residences
It has been said that patient satisfaction improves when they get healthcare services while at home, and patients have less anxiety because they have closer interactions with health professionals and have a fewer emergency room and hospital stays.
Patients suffering from chronic health diseases benefit the most from home health monitoring. Since most chronic diseases are incurable, it is vital to keep an eye on the patient at home and immediately respond if their health signs start to deteriorate.
2. This Monitoring System Lowers Healthcare Expenses, Thus Better Saving The Lives Of Patients
Like what has been mentioned earlier, a remote health monitoring solution lets healthcare providers offer a more efficient and high-quality treatment remotely. This remote option minimizes the necessity for frequent patient visits while still offering top-notch face-to-face and remote support via user-friendly innovations.
3. Home Health Monitoring Systems Free Up More Beds In Hospitals
Complete insight into the development and status of patient cohorts helps maximize the health workforce, reduce clinic congestion to improve caseload, enhance hospital discharge, and prevent avoidable readmissions.
Now that you have learned why home health monitoring is important let us head over to the devices used in this system.
The Use Of Home Health Monitoring Devices: Most Common Remote Patient Monitoring Devices
Remote health monitoring devices augment in-person care, allowing the healthcare provider to understand the full picture of the patient’s symptoms over time instead of just the in-person visit. These devices help providers work more effectively, efficiently, and in a more data-driven approach. Here are the most common home health monitoring devices.
1. Blood Pressure Cuff
A blood pressure cuff has the capability to calculate the heart rate and blood flow of the patient by measuring changes in artery motion. Now on Bluetooth, blood pressure cuffs are similar to the ones we have all used before at the doctor’s room – the key difference is that they send the data in real-time to the clinician for review.
2. Glucometer
Meanwhile, a glucometer tests a patient’s blood sugar via a small drop of blood placed on a test strip connected to the device. The patient places a tiny drop of their blood on the strip, which the meter reads to produce a blood glucose reading. The reading is then sent and delivered in real-time to the provider for review.
3. Pulse Oximeter
Pulse oximeters are non-invasive clips attached to the finger of patients or, occasionally, their earlobe to measure light wavelengths and thus determine blood oxygen levels or how much oxygen is circulating in the red blood cells of the patients. In addition, this pulse oximeter also records the pulse of patients.
4. ECG With Stethoscope
An ECG is designed to capture heart function, while a stethoscope captures lung and heart sounds. The ECG is usually used on patients with cardiac conditions like coronary artery disease or arrhythmias. The stethoscope, on the other hand, amplifies the internal sounds of the patient’s body, enabling the provider to capture lung, heart, and bowel sounds.
5. Wearables (Activity Trackers And Continuous Monitoring)
Activity trackers enable healthcare providers to monitor the patient’s steps, heart rate, sleep, and fall risk. They give them a window into the patient’s daily routine, helping the provider understand how day-to-day activities affect their health and symptoms. Providers are able to utilize the data from the activity to offer the best treatment plans to the patient. The most common activity trackers include Apple Watch and Fitbit.
6. Thermometer
Nowadays, there are already thermometers running on Bluetooth. Thermometers of this kind provide a fast and accurate visual into the patient’s body temperature or fever, offering the provider the needed information to inform the subsequent care steps.
7. Scale
Scales are also now on Bluetooth. Bluetooth scales enable the patient to track changes in their weight over time. Then, the provider monitors these changes to ensure the symptoms are not worsening. And if they are, they will be able to intervene in no time. This is particularly essential for patients suffering from congestive heart failure or CHF. It is vital that the provider can observe changes in the patient’s weight since weight gain is often among the key indicators of a worsening CHF.
Conclusion
Home health monitoring or a hospital in-home technology can transform into an out-of-hospital environment wherein the rational development of technology, including behavioral activation, remote patient monitoring, prescriptive intelligence, and artificial intelligence, is employed. This data, merged with the reasonable intersection of human adjudication, can notice patient deterioration for at-risk individuals well before they show the signs of deterioration.
This system will allow for a potentially less complicated and more timely intervention, thus preventing the progression of sickness and the need for unscheduled, acute, or episodic care.