Remote monitoring technology and virtual clinical support reduces pressure on acute trusts and GP surgeries
With the NHS drive to free up beds and manage waiting lists, Integrated Care Northamptonshire has been working successfully with GP practices, care homes, and other stakeholders across health and social care to reduce pressure on their acute trusts by providing virtual clinical support and remote monitoring, supported by healthcare technology experts, Docobo.
Northamptonshire has a growing ageing population, with more people living with increasingly complex long-term health conditions. Remote monitoring is an innovative solution to ensure that vulnerable people are cared for in their home environment, which is where they would rather be.
Patients are monitored by a Virtual Clinical Hub Team using remote monitoring solutions such as Docobo’s DOC@HOME platform. Carers or patients can enter vital signs and answer questions about their health onto a device, which is then automatically and securely sent to the clinical hub. Patients are monitored daily or three times a day depending on their clinical needs and whenever an anomaly is detected. The clinical team will contact the patient either by phone or video call.
Northamptonshire’s remote monitoring project with Docobo has been rolled out across 11 care homes with a further 9 on boarded later this year. This is also being used by people living in their own home with long-term health conditions, frailty or as part of a community admission avoidance virtual ward model. The initial results for the care homes have shown that remote monitoring supported by the Virtual Clinical Hub has significantly reduced ambulance callouts and same-day GP appointment requests.
One of the care homes in the county has been using the technology with the Virtual Clinical Hub and the results have been encouraging. The average number of GP same-day appointment requests has reduced from 15 per week to an average of 6 per week freeing up GP’s time to care for those residents in greater need.
Within the same care home, the number of ambulances being called out has also dropped from 60 per month to 8 per month.
Integrated Care Northamptonshire is looking to recruit more community patients to be enrolled in the remote monitoring systems who have a long-term condition, moderate to severe frailty, or increased risk of unplanned admissions to hospital. So far, the team has detected conditions in patients that had not yet been treated. These included hypertension, conditions that no longer require the same level of prescribing, and new infections 3 to 5 days in advance of the person becoming unwell. If you work in the county as a healthcare professional and are interested, please contact Paula Love, Lead Nurse via paula.love@nhft.nhs.uk.
Residents who live in Northamptonshire are welcome to enquire about remote monitoring for themselves or someone they know. Please note, this will depend upon meeting the required criteria. Please email Pedro Santos Remote Monitoring Project Lead via Pedro.Santos@westnorthants.gov.uk to find out more.
Docobo and Integrated Care Northamptonshire were finalists in the Innovation category of the International Technology Enabled Care (ITEC) Awards 2023. The ITEC awards were created to celebrate the positive impact technology enabled care services have on the lives of millions of people in the UK
The Innovation award celebrates organisations that have developed innovative TEC products or services. Docobo and ICN have rolled out a fully integrated care delivery service that brings together health and social care to remotely monitor the health and wellbeing of people in their own place of residence, which is showing early evidence of improving individual health and care outcomes.