Publish Date: 24 August 2022
What is considered remote patient monitoring?
Remote patient monitoring (RPM) is a method of delivering healthcare using technology to track patient health outside a standard clinical environment. RPM refers to the particular techniques utilised to communicate information between patients and clinicians electronically, and it is only one of several delivery systems within the telehealth sector.
Vital signs, weight, blood pressure, and heart rate are some physiological data often gathered by RPM programs. Using a particular telehealth computer system or software program that may be loaded on a computer, smartphone, or tablet, patient data is sent to a physician’s office after being collected.
RPM helps chronic, post-discharge, and geriatric patients. Remotely monitoring high-risk patients can alert healthcare companies to health risks or collect patient data between visits. Employers can also use RPM to record workers’ compensation claims and ensure people are returning to work.
Is telehealth the same as remote patient monitoring?
Remote patient monitoring refers to the use of a single technology to support communication between physicians and patients at home, telehealth refers to the whole business, technique, and technologies that enable this sort of healthcare.
RPM is therefore an example of a telehealth delivery system. And the word telehealth may be used to refer to remote patient monitoring, but it may also be used to refer to a wide variety of other activities.
How effective is remote patient monitoring?
Several criteria demonstrate the efficacy of RPM, including increased access to virtual care, expanded patient-provider contact possibilities, and improved patient participation in self-management and the overall total cost of care. The following are the fields that prove the effectiveness of RPM:
- Improves data-driven clinical decision making
- Improves patients’ self-management and adherence to their care plan
- Optimises healthcare staff productivity and addresses clinical staff shortages
- Reduces patient costs and increases job efficiency
- Prevents the spread of infectious illnesses and healthcare-associated infections