Some patients like remote monitoring because it makes them feel reassured about their NHS care. Others enjoy the freedom of being able to live independently with long-term health conditions
For NHS organisations, remote patient monitoring not only frees up capacity for clinicians to look after those in the greatest need, it can also offer valuable insights to help improve operational and strategic decision-making.
We know that data saves lives and improves patient care. But despite the hype about data being the new oil, too much data reporting is crude, clunky and simply amounts to exporting a CSV file after the event and sending it to the NHS in the hope that a spare analyst can study it.
That’s why we have invested in industry-leading reporting and analytics tools to give NHS organisations access to the growing amounts of data being produced by the roll-out of our remote monitoring services.
Inhealthcare has built a ‘data warehouse’ fed with different types of raw data generated by our services such as vital signs readings, questionnaire responses and number of alerts and communications.
NHS providers have direct access to near real-time operational data about their patient cohort and can see which patients have triggered alerts, are about to breach thresholds or have breached a certain number of times. This enables providers to stratify levels of risk within the cohort and improve patient management.
NHS commissioners can view strategic data such as how efficiently and effectively a pathway is being delivered and identify productivity improvements and benchmark their performance against national targets and peer organisations.
The strategic view also offers significant research potential. Data scientists can single out the weighting factors that influence health outcomes and apply these rules to patient cohorts to pinpoint those at risk of deterioration. In other words, it enables machine learning.
Data has enormous value for NHS organisations and patients. We believe reporting, analytics and direct access to data will become essential for delivering successful innovation at scale and helping the health service to address long-term challenges. Given the increased emphasis on how funding is spent by the NHS, these tools will also become essential for demonstrating value for money, especially when times are tough.
As the national supplier of remote monitoring services to NHS Scotland, Inhealthcare is proud to be sponsoring FutureScot’s Health & Care Transformation 2023. If attendees would like to find out more about our data warehouse and remote monitoring services, we would be delighted to meet at the conference.
* Bryn Sage is chief executive of Inhealthcare
If you would like to t read about our Groundbreaking data sharing project click here