Telehealth
Telehealth is a system that is installed in a
patient’s home to enable them or their carer to take a set of
health measurements on a daily basis.
This technology allows us to remotely monitor people with long
term conditions, facilitating early clinical intervention. This
improves the overall management of these conditions and
helps reduce the need for frequent visits to the doctors
surgery and unneccessary and costly hospital admissions.
The equipment given to the patient is dependant upon the
Long Term Conditions (LTCs) that the patient has and which health
measurements are required:
- Blood pressure
- Blood oxygen
- Pulse
- Blood sugar
- Weight
- Temperature
- Peak flow
How it works
Telehealth can give an accurate and regular
picture of a patient‘s health and enables clinicians to
identify trends, take more timely action to address issues and
prevent exacerbations.
The Telehealth equipment is simple to use and
comes complete with all the appropriate devices used to monitor
your health measurements.
An installation engineer will install the
monitor in your home and will train the patient in how to
use the equipment. The monitor is connected to an ordinary
telephone line and is programmed with a free phone number, so there
is no cost to the patient. The data is sent through the
telephone line to to a secure computer within minutes.
View a written
transcript of 'Telehealth as a tool'
A trained clinician (with appropriate access
permissions) can then view the data and monitor the
patient's progress remotely. This enables the clinician to build up
a pattern of readings for each individual patient and
identify changes in the patient's condition(s).
If any readings have fallen outside of
acceptable limits for the individual patient, the clinician can
then take an appropriate course of action. This may include:
- ringing the patient directly to request more information or
additional readings
- speaking with others involved in the care of the patient
or
- arranging a home visit.
Who can use it
Recruitment to Telehealth via the Whole Systems Demonstrator
trial is now closed. Telehealth will be a
mainstream service across Kent.
Eligibility for the mainstream Telehealth service is yet to
be determined.
As part of the Whole System Demonstrator trial, Telehealth has
been distributed to people who have been diagnosed with:
- Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (lung disease)
- Type 2 Diabetes
- Heart failure and
- Hyper Tension.
Find out what patient's think about Telehealth in our Telehealth case studies.
Reports and findings
You can view the evaulation reports for the Kent Telehealth
pilot: