Integrated care solution for patients hospitalized at home, enabled by digital technology
Hospitals are facing huge pressures with growing multi-morbidity and chronic disease in people across Europe. Meanwhile, the number of hospital stays is increasing and there is urgent need to find a cost-effective alternative to ensure the quality of care for all, while enabling healthcare professionals to give more time to emergencies. Hospitalisation at home is proven to increase efficient healthcare provision by reducing costs and boosting patient satisfaction. But the current model of delivery isn’t sustainable as it often consists of a full, dedicated team of physicians and nurses visiting patients’ homes. What’s needed is to harness existing technology and create new processes to deliver a remote healthcare service that simulates the care received in hospital, without overstretching hospital resources.
Better@Home will deploy and exploit an integrated care solution for patients hospitalized at home, enabled by digital technologies, with the aim to improve patient healthcare outcomes and patient satisfaction, as well as, it will help reduce costs to the healthcare system through the optimization of resources and the coordination of a muldisciplinary team, maintaining the quality and safety of the patient.
To achieve this, Better@Home solution:
- Is integrated within existing hospital care workflows, which requires solutions to connect the whole network, from the patient’s home to the hospital.
- Builds protocols to enhance process efficiency; finds ways to connect with the existing hospital technology systems; creates plans for a support centre to carry out administrative tasks; and provides solutions for primary care providers to exchange patient information.
- Is able to monitor and treat a variety of conditions that require hospitalisation, from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), to pneumonia, infections and heart failure.
In that form, patients are monitored using devices that measure their vital signs and report back to a healthcare professional who follows up with the patient remotely. Better@Home is developed and implemented at the Hospital Infanta Leonor in Madrid, joining together all the vital pieces of the jigsaw to make this pioneering innovation a reality.
