Nathan McKinley, Business Development Manager at Cerdonis Technologies LLC, explores how patient monitoring and prevention of health hazards has become easier with the help of AI-based health systems and applications
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has penetrated into every sphere of life now. Thanks to the mobile apps and Internet of Things (IoT) gadgets AI helped breaching the information gap in a never before way. Now, healthcare systems are also experiencing AI benefits in a multitude of ways.
Recently, Dartford and Gravesham NHS Trust in the UK has come up with an AI-powered wearable system for patient monitoring when they are discharged from the hospitals. In this respect, it is noteworthy that most patients once discharged from hospitals again develop health complications that need to be addressed by readmissions or restart of the treatment process. Such remote monitoring for patients discharged from healthcare facilities can significantly reduce the readmission rate and case of home visits for treatment purposes.
No wonder AI-powered remote monitoring and wearable devices together are making this possible and bringing a revolution in the healthcare system. The implications of such systems can really be huge in improving the healthcare systems in many parts of the world.
A case study: How remote monitoring reduced hospital visits?
To understand how remote monitoring of patients, along with AI-powered systems work, we need to take cognisance of some case studies or real-life examples along with the impact they are making. A trust belonging to the National Health Service (NHS) hospital in the United Kingdom recently became able to bring down the home visits for patients with the use of the AI-powered wearable platform. By remote monitoring of the patients who have been released from the hospital recently, the new system could make a breakthrough application to create an era-defining impact.
The study was conducted by the hospital trust in order to assess how the revisits and readmissions of patients could be reduced and how home visits for patients could be minimised. The hospital trust for carrying out this study actually made a partnership with Current, a health technology service provider based in Scotland. Current, which already provides an AI-based remote patient monitoring service platform was the right technology partner for the study.
Another report published last year also came with the prediction that AI can play a significant role in reducing recurrent hospital visits for patients. Throughout the world, several studies and researches are going on to emphasise the impact of AI reducing recurrent healthcare needs for patients.
In this respect, another innovative project undertaken by a Toronto university is important. The researchers here are building an AI-based robot that can streamline the delivery of healthcare and thus can minimise patient wait times at healthcare facilities. This study by the university researchers actually gave wearable devices to some patients who are discharged from hospitals. The devices providing real-time alerts to hospital staff and caregivers continued to provide real-time patient updates.
The study showed that with the use of this technology, the home visits of hospital staff could reduce nearly one-fourth time and thus created more saving of time and resources for the hospital staff and caregivers.
Why remote monitoring really matters?
Patient monitoring over the years has evolved to take more detailed information into consideration. The monitoring yes also made an array of unorganised and unprocessed data available for the medical experts and researchers that earlier beyond accessibility. Such upsurge of data actually made healthcare facilities to opt for modern big data analytics and information-driven solutions.
The increasing role of analytics in assessing patient conditions and the progress of patients through multiple stages of illness has already attracted the attention of healthcare experts and strategists. This is why real-time remote patient monitoring systems, apart from their immediate benefits, are also capable of delivering a paradigm-shifting approach to healthcare improvement for the long term.
Assessment of the patient’s willingness to adhere to such remote systems is another crucial aspect of this evolution. The digital pills and the nanorobots that are still in the experiment stage can further advance patient monitoring and break new frontiers of innovative remote healthcare.
The bigger trend and a holistic approach
If you consider the significance of patient monitoring as a secluded aspect of modern healthcare, you are still undermining the importance of what is really on offer. According to many researchers and strategists of the field, the most transformative impact of AI in healthcare would be visible through remote healthcare and freedom from hospital admissions. This would be the trendsetter for most of the healthcare innovations that are going to come in the course of time.
In the time to come, surveillance centers with remote monitoring systems will play a key role in patient management and improving remote patient care. The larger trend of AI-powered patient care will focus more on the holistic approach of considering total well-being involving emotional, psychological, and lifestyle attributes along with the particular disorders that are being treated. Remote monitoring with AI-based systems will advance holistic healthcare and medication in the time to come.
Conclusion
The AI-powered remote monitoring in healthcare will bring no small revolution. Combining with the concurrent streams of healthcare data emanating from a variety of sensors and healthcare devices, this will bring together many facets of patient data under the purview of analytics and will give birth to healthcare data explosion. The emerging healthcare data explosion will only pave the way for more informed, precision-driven, and personalised treatment processes.
Nathan McKinley
Business Development Manager
Cerdonis Technologies LLC – mobile app developers in USA
