Telehealth must get smarter, says report

A new report calling for ‘more intelligence at the core of healthcare IT systems’ claims that while the current e-health model supports the collection of a limited range of vital signs data, they are not clever enough to carry out vital patient diagnosis.

Wireless technology firm Wireless Healthcare claims telehealth devices lack the intelligence to enable them to identify trends indicating a person is at risk of becoming ill, and are instead relying on call centres to alert staff to problems.

“Currently, the patient is being pushed away from healthcare providers – bricks and mortar – rather than intercepted on their journey into the centre of the care network,” the report says.

The report cites NHS Direct as an example of this: “A person contacting the NHS Direct online healthcare service or the helpline complaining of chest pains will almost always be collected and taken to the nearest hospital.”

Peter Kruger, senior analyst with Wireless Healthcare told E-Health Insider: “We were asked by leading healthcare companies to look into e-health and through interviewing clinicians around the country, we found that there was a gap between the current technological innovations and the kinds that clinicians would like to see.”

Kruger added that current telehealth technology saves clinicians and carers time in having to make unnecessary checks on chronically ill patients, but is not effective in aiding the patient in an emergency.

“E-health technology is growing and is being increasingly used by patients to monitor them. But, the current model is a short-term fix rather than a long-term play. It merely frees up resources within the healthcare system.”

The report says that in the future, e-health services should be capable of carrying out diagnosis and be capable of monitoring patients remotely. Data would be collected from devices carried by domiciliary healthcare workers or owned by the patients themselves.

“As data flowed into the healthcare providers IT infrastructure it would be routed, via intelligent agents, to the appropriate part of the healthcare network.

“It would have a centralised electronic patient record system, accessible by any authorised medical professional and personalised healthcare technology to monitor the patient’s health effectively.”

However, the report also recognises that the intelligence can only be added to e-health if barriers are overcome. These include more widespread use of e-health, a complete switch-over to electronic patient records and reducing fear amongst health professionals that e-health could disrupt the healthcare market.

Kruger said: “There is a fear of technology amongst healthcare staff, especially when they look at job cuts made in the banking industry as a result of technology.

“The current e-health model is unlikely to form the basis of a disruptive service.However technology is changing. For instance, credit card machines will reject cards if they suspect unusual activity on cards. Similarly, e-health machines will probably be capable of diagnosing patients if they suspect illnesses within the next 15 years,” he added.