Remote Patient Monitoring and the Rise of Telemedicine: A Look at Recent Studies

The rise of telemedicine and remote patient monitoring

The Tenovi RPM Research Round-up covers telemedicine and remote patient monitoring topics worldwide, affecting clinicians, chronic care companies, telehealth, and healthcare software and services companies. Catch up on the latest telemedicine and remote patient monitoring research, healthcare education, burnout, medical conditions utilizing RPM, and more from case reports, pilot studies, meta-analyses, and medical center studies.

Telemedicine and Remote Patient Monitoring – A Research Review

This week’s RPM Research Round-up includes telemedicine and remote patient monitoring research published March 5 – 10, 2023. 

Case Report in Oncology

https://www.karger.com/Article/FullText/526930

Telemedicine and remote patient monitoring help patients with life-threatening infections such as sepsis take regular vital sign readings. Thus allowing clinicians to react quickly and help prevent the worsening of symptoms. For example, a case report published in Case Reports in Oncology on March 7 presented a study of a 69-year-old patient with aggressive non-Hodgkin lymphoma admitted to the hospital after developing septic shock. 

Upon release, the patient enrolled in remote patient monitoring for early detection of infection. As a result, the patient was admitted again to the hospital within a few hours after the fever was detected with RPM. Furthermore, treatment was started immediately. The authors report that this “illustrates the importance of early detection of infection in high-risk patients, as well as the benefits of telemonitoring. Moreover, avoiding septic shock and the consequent need for intensive care can significantly reduce healthcare costs.”

The Impact of Remote Patient Monitoring Devices and Systems 

https://www.jacc.org/doi/epdf/10.1016/S0735-1097%2823%2902717-1

Telemedicine and remote patient monitoring promise to detect, monitor, and manage cardiovascular disease. The targeted meta-review published on March 5 reviewed 44 studies from January 2017 through February 2022. The goal was to summarize the impact of RPM on clinical, humanistic, and economic outcomes in patients. The authors concluded that RPM technologies support patients with cardiac disorders by improving clinical outcomes and health-related quality of life. 

RPM was also found to lessen cardiovascular disease’s economic burden by reducing hospital healthcare resource utilization. Healthcare utilization describes the use of services by people to prevent and cure health problems, promote health maintenance, or obtain information about one’s health status and prognosis.

RPM detected more atrial fibrillation events, was generally more accurate than other monitoring or routine clinical care, and reduced N-terminal-pro hormone B-type natriuretic peptide levels in 95% of patients with heart failure. In addition, RPM significantly improved blood pressure control in 4 of 4 studies assessing blood pressure compared with baseline or engagement with remote patient monitoring. 

Data Deluge From Remote Monitoring 

https://www.jacc.org/doi/epdf/10.1016/S0735-1097%2823%2902590-1

A study of 32721 patients with cardiac implantable electronic devices (CIED) was published on March 6 by Elsevier on behalf of the American College of Cardiology Foundation. It aimed to quantify the data deluge from CIED, as RPM is the standard of follow-up care for cardiac patients with CIED. The flood of data from remote cardiac monitoring associated with CIED has become a significant challenge for clinicians. 

The study’s researchers sought to quantify the data deluge from:

  • 14,465 pacemakers
  • 8,381 loop recorders
  • 5351 cardioverter defibrillators
  • 3,531 cardiac resynchronization therapy defibrillators
  • 993 cardiac resynchronization therapy pacemakers

Over two years, 384,796 transmissions from all devices were received. The study concluded that remote cardiac implantable monitoring results in much data. However, effective utilization of screening strategies can significantly decrease the burden on providers, thus improving patient care more dynamically.

Telehealth and Telemedicine in Adult Patients After Hospitalization for COPD 

https://jornaldepneumologia.com.br/details/3816/en-US/telehealth-and-telemedicine-in-the-management-of-adult-patients-after-hospitalization-for-copd-exacerbation–a-scoping-review

The Brazilian Journal of Pulmonology published a review of remote patient monitoring studies in countries including Australia, Italy, Spain, Sweden, the U.K., and the U.S. In recent years, the Brazilian Journal of Pulmonology has played an essential role in disseminating the knowledge produced in the field of respiratory medicine in Brazil and other countries.

In a review of 39 telemedicine and remote patient monitoring studies, the authors reported evidence showing that telehealth, telemedicine, and telemonitoring strategies can benefit COPD patients after hospital discharge. The benefits of RPM were: improving patient quality of life, reducing re-hospitalizations and emergency services, hospital length stay, and health care costs.

Key findings from the article are:

  • The majority of telemedicine strategies positively improved health care and quality of life in patients following hospitalization for COPD.
  • Telemedicine was effective for early detection and proactive intervention in patients post-acute exacerbation of COPD. 
  • Adopting telemedicine in everyday clinical practice could substantially improve the care of chronic patients.

For more articles on the latest telemedicine and remote patient monitoring research, visit the Tenovi blog. You can also schedule a free demo and consultation with Tenovi. 

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