Telemonitoring as Part of the Electronic Patient Record
Telemonitoring, integrated with electronic patient records, enhances home recovery for patients by allowing remote monitoring and support. This innovation improves patient life quality and extends life expectancy, particularly for cancer patients. A collaboration between nexuzhealth and Byteflies leverages telemetry to streamline healthcare delivery, demonstrating significant benefits during the COVID-19 pandemic. The OncoCare@home project exemplifies the initiative's success, aiming to reduce hospital stays and improve cancer patient outcomes through early detection and monitoring. This approach promises a more efficient, unified healthcare system, benefiting both providers and patients.
Telemonitoring as Part of the Electronic Patient Record
Telemonitoring, integrated with electronic patient records, enhances home recovery for patients by allowing remote monitoring and support. This innovation improves patient life quality and extends life expectancy, particularly for cancer patients. A collaboration between nexuzhealth and Byteflies leverages telemetry to streamline healthcare delivery, demonstrating significant benefits during the COVID-19 pandemic. The OncoCare@home project exemplifies the initiative's success, aiming to reduce hospital stays and improve cancer patient outcomes through early detection and monitoring. This approach promises a more efficient, unified healthcare system, benefiting both providers and patients.
Note: This article is a translation of an article created by NexuzHealth. You can find the original article here.
Telemonitoring as Part of the Electronic Patient Record
A prime example of technological innovation to further enhance patient support.
An increasing number of patients are recovering from surgery or illness not in the hospital, but in the comfort of their homes. This brings numerous advantages, including improved quality of life for the patient. Thanks to telemonitoring, healthcare providers can monitor and potentially intervene from a distance. For optimal data exchange and processing, seamless integration with the electronic health record (EHR) is essential.
Telemonitoring
“If we can detect side effects sooner and monitor them better through telemonitoring, we can not only improve the quality of life but also the life expectancy of some cancer patients,” says Prof. Dr. Delforge, oncologist at UZ Leuven. Telemonitoring involves the remote collection and monitoring of patient data using digital technology to continuously evaluate the patient's health at home. Due to technological advances, a push for greater efficiency, and the use of less invasive techniques, the number of people recovering at home is increasing. Additionally, the government expanded the number of procedures that no longer require hospital admission from 246 to 551 last year. Patient follow-up is, therefore, increasingly happening outside hospital walls and by various healthcare providers.
Hassle-free Telemetry
In this transition to more integrated care, telemonitoring plays a crucial role. Not only does it provide doctors or other healthcare providers with vital health data from afar, but it also enhances collaboration and coordination among caregivers. The main challenge is to exchange collected data securely and systematically with healthcare providers and patients throughout the entire care journey, from hospital discharge to home recovery follow-up. Here, integration with the EHR is indispensable.
With this perspective, Nexuzhealth and Byteflies decided to join forces. Bob Neven, Director of Product Management at Nexuzhealth, says, “Byteflies specializes in optimizing integrated care pathways with telemetry. The company developed a user-friendly solution during the COVID-19 pandemic for monitoring coronavirus patients at home, thus alleviating the burden on hospitals. They later approached us to explore how we could approach telemonitoring more systematically: capturing vital parameters at home and ensuring their flow to healthcare providers is incredibly important. Integration with the EPR enables this.
By making data available in one place, healthcare providers not only gain a broader view of the patient's health condition but also all look at the same data. This improves communication and decision-making.” This laid the groundwork for the OncoCare@home pilot project in 2022. UZ Leuven, the Wit-gele Kruis East Flanders, and the Leuven Cancer Institute also joined the consortium. The project's concrete goal is to reduce hospital stays by 10% and significantly increase the life expectancy and quality of life of the involved cancer patients, for instance, by detecting and monitoring treatment side effects more quickly.
Care Pathways
Hans De Clerq, co-CEO of Byteflies: “Within the project, we are currently focusing on specific care pathways. One of these involves patients with lung and esophageal cancer, who can now return home sooner thanks to less invasive surgical techniques. However, side effects that would have been quickly detected in the hospital now remain under the radar for longer. For example, a number of these patients experience postoperative complications such as atrial fibrillation. These side effects can be perfectly monitored via telemetry. Since the start of the project, atrial fibrillation has been detected in more than 10% of the 28 patients.”
For exchanging medical information, nexuzhealth utilizes the HL7 FHIR standard (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources standard, a set of rules and specifications for exchanging electronic healthcare data), combined with a PDF report that provides additional context for the measured parameters. Bob Neven says, “It's crucial for the data to be structured in the EHR because, combined with the data already available in the patient record, it offers valuable insights. Additionally, as an open platform, we aim for maximum interoperability. This means there's no need to develop a new integration for each device manufacturer: if you capture the temperature from device A, the temperature from device B can be captured in the same way. Other manufacturers of telemonitoring devices can also connect to the platform.”
Standard Integration Thanks to the Telemonitoring Prescription
Therefore, both partners are also supporting a telemonitoring prescription, which provides for a standardized integration between telemonitoring providers, EHRs, and other stakeholders in the healthcare landscape. By exchanging as much information as possible according to industry standards, healthcare providers get a much better view of health data. This only enhances patient follow-up and treatment.
Meanwhile, the partners are also exploring other care pathways within cardiology and neurology to expand their collaboration further.
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Note: This article is a translation of an article created by NexuzHealth. You can find the original article here.
Telemonitoring as Part of the Electronic Patient Record
A prime example of technological innovation to further enhance patient support.
An increasing number of patients are recovering from surgery or illness not in the hospital, but in the comfort of their homes. This brings numerous advantages, including improved quality of life for the patient. Thanks to telemonitoring, healthcare providers can monitor and potentially intervene from a distance. For optimal data exchange and processing, seamless integration with the electronic health record (EHR) is essential.
Telemonitoring
“If we can detect side effects sooner and monitor them better through telemonitoring, we can not only improve the quality of life but also the life expectancy of some cancer patients,” says Prof. Dr. Delforge, oncologist at UZ Leuven. Telemonitoring involves the remote collection and monitoring of patient data using digital technology to continuously evaluate the patient's health at home. Due to technological advances, a push for greater efficiency, and the use of less invasive techniques, the number of people recovering at home is increasing. Additionally, the government expanded the number of procedures that no longer require hospital admission from 246 to 551 last year. Patient follow-up is, therefore, increasingly happening outside hospital walls and by various healthcare providers.
Hassle-free Telemetry
In this transition to more integrated care, telemonitoring plays a crucial role. Not only does it provide doctors or other healthcare providers with vital health data from afar, but it also enhances collaboration and coordination among caregivers. The main challenge is to exchange collected data securely and systematically with healthcare providers and patients throughout the entire care journey, from hospital discharge to home recovery follow-up. Here, integration with the EHR is indispensable.
With this perspective, Nexuzhealth and Byteflies decided to join forces. Bob Neven, Director of Product Management at Nexuzhealth, says, “Byteflies specializes in optimizing integrated care pathways with telemetry. The company developed a user-friendly solution during the COVID-19 pandemic for monitoring coronavirus patients at home, thus alleviating the burden on hospitals. They later approached us to explore how we could approach telemonitoring more systematically: capturing vital parameters at home and ensuring their flow to healthcare providers is incredibly important. Integration with the EPR enables this.
By making data available in one place, healthcare providers not only gain a broader view of the patient's health condition but also all look at the same data. This improves communication and decision-making.” This laid the groundwork for the OncoCare@home pilot project in 2022. UZ Leuven, the Wit-gele Kruis East Flanders, and the Leuven Cancer Institute also joined the consortium. The project's concrete goal is to reduce hospital stays by 10% and significantly increase the life expectancy and quality of life of the involved cancer patients, for instance, by detecting and monitoring treatment side effects more quickly.
Care Pathways
Hans De Clerq, co-CEO of Byteflies: “Within the project, we are currently focusing on specific care pathways. One of these involves patients with lung and esophageal cancer, who can now return home sooner thanks to less invasive surgical techniques. However, side effects that would have been quickly detected in the hospital now remain under the radar for longer. For example, a number of these patients experience postoperative complications such as atrial fibrillation. These side effects can be perfectly monitored via telemetry. Since the start of the project, atrial fibrillation has been detected in more than 10% of the 28 patients.”
For exchanging medical information, nexuzhealth utilizes the HL7 FHIR standard (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources standard, a set of rules and specifications for exchanging electronic healthcare data), combined with a PDF report that provides additional context for the measured parameters. Bob Neven says, “It's crucial for the data to be structured in the EHR because, combined with the data already available in the patient record, it offers valuable insights. Additionally, as an open platform, we aim for maximum interoperability. This means there's no need to develop a new integration for each device manufacturer: if you capture the temperature from device A, the temperature from device B can be captured in the same way. Other manufacturers of telemonitoring devices can also connect to the platform.”
Standard Integration Thanks to the Telemonitoring Prescription
Therefore, both partners are also supporting a telemonitoring prescription, which provides for a standardized integration between telemonitoring providers, EHRs, and other stakeholders in the healthcare landscape. By exchanging as much information as possible according to industry standards, healthcare providers get a much better view of health data. This only enhances patient follow-up and treatment.
Meanwhile, the partners are also exploring other care pathways within cardiology and neurology to expand their collaboration further.
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