NHS partners with Inhealthcare to expand remote monitoring across Scotland
Remote monitoring pathways help patients to safely manage their health needs at home
The NHS in Scotland has partnered with Inhealthcare to develop and expand a range of remote monitoring pathways across the nation to help patients safely self manage their health needs at home.
The pathways, which include blood pressure monitoring and chronic pain management, are part of Connect Me, the remote monitoring programme for NHS Scotland.
The NHS developed the pathways using Inhealthcare’s award-winning digital health platform and, to date, nearly 12,000 people have used earlier iterations of the pathways to support conditions including asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, depression, hypertension, irritable bowel syndrome, and undernutrition.
The blood pressure monitoring service is expected to be one of the largest pathways of its kind and so far has supported more than 5,700 patients.
A growing number of patients are being offered Connect Me as a means to interact and communicate with their healthcare professionals.
The programme enables people to have more choice and greater flexibility about how, and where, they manage their health and wellbeing.
There are more than one million GP appointments per year in Scotland just for measuring blood pressure and, by rolling out remote monitoring pathways for conditions such as hypertension, we are helping to create significant extra capacity within the healthcare system
The free programme is provided via mobile app, website, text message, or automated phone call and is being used to monitor the effects of starting or stopping treatments, issue reminders or encouragement, spot flare-ups so treatment can be delivered sooner, identify reasons why a condition might not be well controlled, and offer advice and support during treatment plans.
Benefits for patients include less time spent attending and travelling to appointments and increased confidence to self manage conditions and care.
Benefits for clinicians include better availability of data to assist early intervention, greater adherence to treatment, enhanced provision of care, net zero and productivity gains from less travel, more-timely face-to-face contact with patients, more-efficient use of resources, and reduced hospital admissions.
Bryn Sage, chief executive of Inhealthcare, said: “We are proud to be working alongside the team at NHS Scotland to help Scotland become an international leader in technology-enabled care, supporting more people to live longer, healthier lives at home or in community settings.
“There are more than one million GP appointments per year in Scotland just for measuring blood pressure and, by rolling out remote monitoring pathways for conditions such as hypertension, we are helping to create significant extra capacity within the healthcare system.”
Inhealthcare announced in early 2022 it was the successful bidder for the NHS Scotland contract to support the scaling up and mainstreaming of remote patient monitoring services across Scotland.
And an evaluation found that Scotland’s remote health pathway for people with COVID-19 symptoms improved access to NHS services and could be safely rolled out to help others.