Services
What is Telehealth?
Telehealth is a form of Telecare which is designed to complement health care through the remote monitoring of vital signs in the patient's own home.
Diagnosis, assessment and management of a patient's conditions can be supported by monitoring vital signs, such as blood pressure, weight, glucose levels or pulse, without requiring the patient to leave their own home.
These measurements are relayed via a telephone line to a database where the information is automatically checked to ensure that it falls within set parameters. The patient's healthcare team can access this database at anytime to review treatment or change settings.
If data is received which is outside the parameters, an alarm is triggered which can be immediately responded to by either the centre or by designated health carers.
The fact that telehealth enables the patients to remain in their own home, results in a wide range of benefits (as set out below) for patients, clinicians and health care providers. The government itself has already placed technology at the heart of its modernisation programme and is already supporting the implementation of telehealth to improve NHS services and deliver cost savings.
Health care professionals too are quickly recognising that Telehealth can provide integrated, patient-centred care which offers very important benefits to the patient and can improve the management of an increasing number of long-term conditions such as COPD, diabetes, heart failure, coronary heart disease and sleep apnoea.
Most importantly, for patients, telehealth allows an individual to remain in a more comfortable and less stressful environment where independence and dignity can be retained.
Benefits of using Telehealth
For the patient
- improved quality of life as it reduces the need for lengthy visits to hospitals
- promotes independence and dignity for patients, particularly for those with long-term conditions
- increases patient knowledge about their condition, encouraging positive input and self management
- empowers patients by allowing them to work towards improving their condition and achieving lifestyle goals
- improved medication compliance as it is easy to check that a medication routine is being followed
- reduce the stress on carers due to reduction in hospital visits and the knowledge that the patient is being constantly monitored and at ease in their home environment
For the health professional
- enables clinicians to monitor a large number of patients in wide spread locations
- reduces workload due to easy access and management of patients
- enables community based staff to reduce the need for health visits and cut down on travelling
- allows care to be matched to the need in a planned, co-ordinated way
- reduces the need for health visits
For the healthcare organisation
- frees up more in-patient facilities
- reduces avoidable admissions by promoting proactive care at home
- creates patients with greater knowledge of their condition, thus improving and promoting self management
- encourages health and social care to work together in order to promote early discharge through joint support in a patient's home environment
- helps to increase capacity in acute care trusts by decreasing unplanned admissions and allowing for more planned care
- develops proactive care, where the early detection of medical deterioration allows for proactive action before the situation becomes a medical emergency
- reduces transport needs and associated costs, both for ambulance teams bringing in patients and community based staff
- helps with the pre-assessment and monitoring of patients requiring surgery. Patients with heart problems can be monitored over a period of time to ensure they are fit and strong enough to undergo surgery