Norwegian
patients are currently testing a system using tablet computers and a
customised app developed by SINTEF. The aim is to prevent sudden dips in
the patient's medical condition and exacerbations of the disease. (Image Credit: SINTEF)
Patients can use tablet computers to report their daily condition. Hospitals can pick up early symptoms, take action and thereby reduce admissions
Product designer Jarl Reitan and his colleague Silje Bøthun are
working on a preventative project for patients with advanced COPD. Five
patients from Trondheim are currently testing a system using tablet
computers and a customised app developed by SINTEF.
"The aim is to
achieve a closer dialogue between the patient and the support services,
prevent sudden dips in the patient's medical condition and exacerbations
of the disease”.
Digital reporting
Using the app, patients submit a
simple daily report to St. Olav’s Hospital, which receives the data
about their current condition. Patients describe their general daily
condition using simple, self-explanatory response options such as "good"
or "bad". They can also telephone the monitoring centre from their
tablet if they need to talk to someone.
The municipality is also
working on setting up an emergency medical centre to act as a call
centre for the chronically ill. This centre will collect all the data
reported by patients from their own homes, and will be able to follow up
any patients that require attention. Since patients report their
condition on a daily basis, and these data are analysed by the medical
centre, patients do not need to worry that any exacerbations will not be
picked up.
Repeated hospitalisations
At the moment, COPD patients require frequent hospitalisations.
Clinic Manager Anne Hildur Henriksen of the Clinic for Thoracic Medicine at St. Olav’s Hospital says that many patients with advanced COPD end up in hospital because of an acute exacerbation of their condition. She refers to a Scandinavian study which found that the average length of stay of these patients was 8.6 days each time, and that 13% of the patients are admitted more than twice a year.
Tablet is the right medium
The tablet
computer was chosen as a medium because the tool is not associated with a
stigma, and has many different applications. Many of the current aids
send the opposite signal; with their large buttons and unusual design,
they stand out in a patient's living room. Tablets can be used by
grandchildren when they come to visit, and the idea is also for the
tablet to provide access to written information, videos and tutorials
for patients.
"Providing the user with knowledge about the disease is a major part of the project, and will be incorporated into any future system. We want to help people with COPD to learn about their own disease – this will give them a better overview and more control", explains Silje Bøthun. "That is why it is important for the patients to use the media over an extended period. We have loaded the tablets with games like cabal, and received enquiries about Facebook and yr.no. We also have to make the app interesting enough that people will use it”.
What information is required?
The next step
for the researchers is to work with the company Imatis to improve the
technical aspects of the product, and to work with the users to improve
its content.
"We need to find out what the patients think about the reporting tool, so that we can evaluate it. We are also working closely with the hospitals and municipalities, to find out what THEY need to know. The information that the patients need to pass on is not necessarily the same as that required by the hospital", says Bøthun.
COPD patients
currently report to the specialist health services or hospital, but the
municipalities will soon be taking over this service.
Municipalities are interested
At the moment, the
municipalities of Trondheim and Bærum are leading the way in testing out
this welfare technology, but Stavanger has also joined in – and
"border" municipalities such as Bergen and Kristiansand think that the
project is interesting and would like to be part of it at a later stage.
The
idea is for patients' data to be made easily available to their doctors
and to the hospitals' lung departments. This will enable them to more
actively monitor the course of their patients' disease, and will give
them more options for communication and inter-departmental resource
utilisation.
"Communication between patients and the health
services is a problem that is not just limited to people with COPD. This
project has therefore received a great deal of attention, and we were
recently mentioned in a new Report to the Storting", relates Jarl Reitan
of SINTEF.
FACTS:
• The Project "HelsaMi" (MyHealth) has
received NOK 18 million of funding from the Research Council of Norway.
These funds will be allocated to the following:
- a service model showing how healthcare personnel should serve patients
- a technology project focused on designing the technology for the iPad and receiver system.
• The
industrial partners are IMATIS and Oldenburg Medical (complex training
systems). The latter has already created a series of videos. Trondheim
Municipality and St. Olav’s Hospital are also partners in the project.
Source: SINTEF