Benefits

Good quality home monitoring allows people to live at home independently longer and with fewer severe health episodes and emergency admissions. There is also a greater opportunity to detect infection and other health problems such as pneumonia.

When a hospital visit is required for either elective care or as an emergency then the length of hospital stay will be reduced.

This provides a better quality of living for patients, and greater empowerment of patients and loved ones.

MonitorMe doesn’t look like a medical device and is of little value to anyone else other than the user and is therefore highly unlikely to be stolen unlike iPads or Smart phones.

Those with limited technical ability do not have to worry about using MonitorMe

Also, for some this may result in a life-saving intervention and therefore an extended life!

Using the use of a landline gives the patient the reassurance and guarantees that the data has arrived safely.

Having vital signs data and health questionnaire responses automatically triaged will allow those patients most at need to be prioritized and bring Improved efficiency through seeing the right patients at the right time.

During home visits healthcare staff will be freed from taking manual vital sign observations ( 15 minutes a patient), meaning they have more time to think, consider and deliver patient care.

We see MonitorMe being targeted at the most economically deprived which will help deliver health equality targets and provide satisfaction through making a real difference to the quality of life of the most vulnerable people.

Theses smarter interventions will reduce hospital admissions and therefore provide an economic benefit. The cost to the CCG for a hospital admission is generally between £900 and £1,200. The cost of MonitorMe will be recovered several times over for every hospital admission prevented.

Benefits will be maximized by integrating MonitorMe with existing local services and enabling them to deliver better care.

Therefore there is a potential financial benefit to the CCG in providing MonitorMe to the population with say a 1 in 4 chance or greater of an emergency hospital admission within a 12 month period. Alternatively there is a potential financial benefit in providing MonitorMe to those members of the population at risk of an Emergency Admission within 4 years.

Benefits to patients and primary care clearly have a huge knock on effect to the need for secondary care and in particular the frequency of outpatient appointments required

Indeed this can sometimes be seen as a problem with the implementation of new technologies – the main cost centre being primary care whereas the main beneficiary might be secondary care.

The benefits to secondary care are however also tangible. As an example it is common for the last two days of stay in hospital following surgery to be largely precautionary keeping an eye on vital signs observations and checking for signs of infection etc. What if this could be done from the patient’s home. If they are given or already have a MonitorMe telephone then it can. Calls can be scheduled at a high frequency possibly once every two hours and the vital signs data can be reviewed on the ward. The health questionnaire can be tailored to ask questions about wound dressing or medication and the responses used to determine the need for a home visit.

The early release of beds provides an opportunity for a greater number of operations, and most importantly reduce waiting lists.

Considering the business case for MonitorMe. The cost to the hospital trust of a bed is around £500 per day.

If a patient is discharged 2 days earlier then this results in a saving £1000 (or more likely £1,000 additional fees through additional tariffs).

The cost of MonitorMe will be recovered 4 fold for every two days of an early discharge.

This assumes the patient keeps the device for a full year.

There may be opportunity to transfer license fees to the primary care provider or the patient themselves on completion of transfer from the hospital trust.

Alternatively, the device may be returned for redeployment thus generating multiple opportunities for cost benefits.

The National Early Warning Score (NEWS) system is used widely when patients are presented to hospital or in their on-going assessment during hospital stay. This is basically vital signs data and an assessment of consciousness.

The system was developed by The Royal College of Physicians with Sanandco Director Professor Bryan Williams as the committee Chair.

MonitorMe could be used to provide the same type of data on an individual in their own home.

It has always been intended that MonitorMe will be used at scale to generate population relevant health data

Imagine if MonitorMe were deployed across an elderly community, the health of a community or the health of the nation could be captured at a given time. This is the predictive technology required to offer our elderly population the NHS service they long for and we all expect in the 21^st century.

Imagine if hospital operating officers had access to this data from across their catchment area. By automatically counting the number of red flag alerts generated, this would inform the health service of deteriorating health across a community and allow procedures to be put in place ahead of peak demand on Emergency Department Admissions. This is exactly the task Evelyn Barker gave the Cambridge Wireless Community in September 2016.

Well Evelyn I am delighted to say that the technology you seek already exists. It is here right now MonitorMe!