The Next Digitization Frontier for the Defense Industry: Remote Health Monitoring
The Next Digitization Frontier for the Defense Industry: Remote Health Monitoring Global Investments On the Rise to Modernize Defense …
One example of the collateral consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic is that patients suffering from chronic pathologies have been avoiding hospital consultations since March 2020. Out of fear of being contaminated, but also on the recommendations of the health authorities, they preferred to postpone or simply cancel their appointments, causing health professionals to fear a delay in treatment and a potentially serious risk of decompensation. Under such context, the widespread use of teleconsultation and telemonitoring has never been more relevant. Explanations.
At risk for serious medical complications, some chronically ill patients were encouraged to be more cautious with Covid and to stay at home as much as possible. For these patients, periods of confinement presented a real risk: many cancelled their routine follow-up appointments. A false good idea, which health professionals tried to warn about as early as the end of March.
Moreover, the increase in sedentary lifestyle can have consequences on the exacerbation of several pathologies such as depression, obesity, etc.
Everything from implementing separate circuits between suspect patients and non Covid-19 patients, disinfecting premises and equipment, personalizing support methods, to providing automatically renewed prescriptions, several actions have been undertaken to reassure the chronically ill and make them return to hospitals, albeit without always meeting with success. At the same time, doctors have proposed teleconsultation. “For a patient with heart failure, for example, we can simply ask them to weigh themselves at home and ask them if they experience shortness of breath when they climb the stairs. This is one of the signs that will lead us to suggest that they come and see us, while putting protective measures in place,” explained Pierre-Louis Druais, a general practitioner and member of the scientific council, on BFMTV in April.
Teleconsultation has therefore established itself as a safe way to keep in touch with patients, but simple bathroom scales quickly reach their limits when it comes to providing a positive patient experience and serving as viable diagnostic tools. With devices such as connected scales offering limited visibility into patients’ health status, remote monitoring devices allowing continuous multi-parameter monitoring has thus proven to be particularly suitable.
Preventable hospitalization, easier home care, improved medical follow-up, and early detection of a deterioration in health status for appropriate medical decision making… These are just some of the prime examples of the great promise of remote monitoring for patients with diabetes, COPD, sleep apnea and heart failure. In this new paradigm, patients can continue to live normally at home, knowing that their health status is being monitored. But for telemonitoring to really work, it is necessary to rely on medical devices that are reliable, comfortable and ergonomic for the patient, who must be able to live a normal life, forgetting that they are telemonitored. A new range of lighter, more reliable medical devices is emerging with new embedded technologies, all with the objective of better monitoring and greater acceptability by patients.
Last but not least, these tools must be offered to healthcare professionals to help them better monitor their patients without burdening them with additional work, i.e. generating untimely alerts or false alarms…
Aware of these issues, Chronolife has developed a patented intelligent t-shirt, capable of continuously capturing 6 different physiological parameters in real life :
Unlike other telemonitoring solutions, Chronolife integrates the sensors directly into the fabric, so patients can wear the shirt like any other garment and machine wash it. This ease of use improves compliance and paves the way for continuous remote monitoring. Thanks to Chronolife, healthcare professionals have accurate information on the health status of their patients, without the need to have them travel to the hospital. This reliable diagnostic tool enables them to fully ensure the continuity of care between the hospital and the patient’s home, and avoid any risk of contamination to these fragile populations.
