Telemedicine slashes hospital stays

A British telemedicine project has halved the time patients spend in the hospital by enabling doctors to monitor their condition remotely.

Carlisle Housing Association and the Carlisle and District Primary Care Trust wanted to reduce the length of hospital stays for patients and increase the independence of patients by giving them more information about their condition.

Using the system to manage chronic respiratory diseases, doctors in Carlisle have managed to reduce hospital stays for some patients from 10 days to 5.5 days.

The project involves giving telemedicine monitors to patients, thus allowing them to measure their own temperature, heart rate, breathing rate, electrocardiogram and blood pressure. These results are sent via a phone line to a secure server, where they are saved as an electronic patient record, which can then be accessed by doctors or nurses.

The system can monitor diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which currently costs the United Kingdom's National Health Service about $1.44 billion (818 million pounds) per year.

Having the equipment, supplied by Tunstall Group, helps patients feel less anxious about their condition because if readings on the monitor deviate from levels set by the clinician, an alert is sent out to the housing association.

Tunstall said the technology is very easy for patients to use and is used by people ages 35 to 82, with a 94 percent rate of acceptance by patients.

Kay Douglas, senior clinical manager on Carlisle's Intermediate Care Team, said the service is enabling patients to live independently but also enabling doctors to adopt a more preventative approach, which has helped to reduce hospital readmissions.

Steve Ranger of Silicon.com reported from London.

[chuchucuhi]

What the U.S. needs

This is what the U.S. needs and will need in the upcoming decade with the baby boomers getting older. The cost of our unmanaged healthcare is so expensive anything to get people out of the hospital into their own homes could at least slow down the rise in healthcare costs. Though is might put a bit of a damper on the GDP but I think investors could handle it. Someday, when we have universal healthcare...

[yrrahxob]

Wish we had it here

I have COPD and I would welcome a program like this. I'm sure it will be a long time coming though because of the money-hungry health care providers and their lobbyists in Washington, DC.

[mlcomm]

Telemedicine study

Was the study published? If so, where?
thanks.

It Changes Definition of Medical Practice

One of the reasons telemedicine adoption has been slow in the US is because it changes definition of the medical practice, running into many legal roadblocks.

We covered some aspects of telemedicine at The Medical Blog Network:
Second E-pinion: Challenging the Definition of Medical Practice

[pareshvora]

Telemedicine

Very goog way to reduce stress and costs involved in medical treatment. Readers may be interested to know that a Bangalore based heart hospital, along with Indian Space Reserach Organization, has taken initiative in providing telemedicine based early and post-treatment diagnostics to remote areas in India and in surroinding countries. The patients reach such centres, near to their homes, where even doctors may not be available. The technicians then hook up the disgnostic instruments and the experts seating in Bangalore review the conditions and prescribe immediate remedy (for short term relief) and advise on further long term treatment as well.