Innovative solutions for patients
Published on 13/08/2021 in Sectors
An efficient, high-performing and, at the same time, affordable health care is high on everyone’s agenda. But to get there, we have to move away from a one-sided focus on cure and invest more heavily in prevention. The reasoning is simple: avoiding health problems is smarter and more sustainable than curing them. Technology can make that happen.
Prevention is better than cure
Promoting, protecting and preserving health is best achieved by deploying several strategies simultaneously. More technology is one of the main elements:
- The combination of sensors in smartphones, smart watches or other devices can help to continuously monitor patients’ health or stimulate proper, healthy behaviour.
- Implants are increasingly getting smarter and are already transmitting lots of data.
- Smart medication safes help to keep track of patients taking the right dosage of medicines on time.
- In some nursing homes you will already find small AI robots that can hold simple conversations with residents and thus reduce the feeling of loneliness.
- Also for patients with chronic conditions, various apps can help to continually monitor the personal health situation and intervene when threshold values are deviating.
The benefits of preventive health care…
…for patients, residents and visitors:
- The combination of monitoring and stimulation gives both patients and residents the feeling of being in control
…for your organization:
- Technology frees up time for more human contact
- Data streams provide new insights into the effectiveness of treatments
A connected patient is intelligent enough to understand his treatment, adapt his environment and thus become an actor of his health...
Professor Philippe Coucke - CHU Luik
What can preventive healthcare mean for your company?
Remote consultation
Corona forced many of us to drastically change the way we both work and live. Working and shopping from home became the norm. Consultations also changed. Just dropping in on the doctor became less obvious. Meanwhile, remote consultations are no longer an oddity. With the right technological support it can bring a lot of advantages for both patient and health care provider.
The advantages of remote consultation…
…for patients, residents and visitors:
- Wider availability of consultation hours
- Shorter waiting times
…for your organization:
- Health problems can be detected quicker
- If necessary, referrals can be made more quickly
What can remote consultation mean for your company?
doktr brings the doctor to you
With the doktr app, anyone can contact a doctor via the smartphone in an easy and fast way.The app only uses experienced and licensed doctors. You don’t even need to schedule an appointment. Simply log in via itsme, fill in a few details online and, a few moments later, the doctor will start a video or phone call. Afterwards, you receive a brief summary of what was discussed, including prescriptions or a doctor's note.
The corona pandemic has made us all realize the importance of an efficient, agile, accessible and future-proof healthcare system in Belgium.
Proximus wants to play a facilitating role in accelerating the digital transformation and driving innovation in health care, for the benefit of both doctors and patients.
Guillaume Boutin - CEO of the Proximus Group
We won't let you go!
Letting seniors live at home as long as possible is smart. People are happier, live longer, and home care costs less than a permanent stay in a retirement home. By relying on a cluster of technologies, both those in need of care and their families have peace of mind.
For example, alarm systems with sensors can detect a fall, among other things, and ensure that help will arrive quickly. Smart housing goes even further. By connecting various sensors and devices, the safest possible home environment is created. But also, home care providers are becoming more digital.
Mobile care at Familiehulp
Familiehulp home care workers access work schedules and patient information via their smartphones. Home care staff have become more mobile thanks to digital tools while paper flows have been substantially reduced. Employees now retrieve and forward data in real time. Patient records can thus be kept up to date even better.
Elderly people who continue to live well supervised at home live, on average, one year longer than those who stay at a retirement home.
Source: Zorgvisie.nl, April 2021.
The benefits of mobile care and home care...
…for seniors, patients and family members:
- More comfort
- An increased sense of security
…for your organization:
- More efficiency
- Smarter data flows
- Less paperwork
The use of apps is part of the evolution towards a more preventive and multidisciplinary supported care.
Dr. Elke De Vuyst, cardiologist at the ISPPC CHU de Charleroi
Checking your heart remotely with FibriCheck
To avoid unnecessary consultations and examinations in patients with atrial fibrillation, AZ Groeninge provides an app that continually measures the heart rhythm. If an anomaly is detected, the app remotely informs the specialist staff and the cardiologist. This enables mobile follow-up of patients and preventive treatment.
Smarter patient follow-up
Patients also appreciate smarter monitoring. The combination of various technologies makes it possible to closely monitor their health situation 24/7.
- For example, patients can log in to an app that automatically registers weight, blood pressure and saturation level.
- The app transmits the data in a secure manner to the hospital, where the data is added to the patient's medical record.
- Every day, the doctor and nurses check the data received.
- If one of the values exceeds a certain threshold, the system generates an alarm and a doctor or nurse can contact the patient directly.
- By deliberately keeping the whole setup low-threshold, a wide variety of patients can use the system.
The result? Patients feel safer and the health service improves.
Heart failure monitoring via an app at Charleroi CHU
At Charleroi CHU, some of the heart patients are followed up remotely via heart failure monitoring. The combination of a smartphone, weighing scales, a blood pressure monitor and a saturation meter to measure the oxygen level in the blood are sufficient.
Even more innovations
Additional digital innovations are knocking at the door of our health care system.
- In care centers for people with dementia, Azure Kinect allows doors to open and close automatically. When a patient has the urge to walk away, the camera sends out an alert.
- Voice technology and facial recognition are ready to prompt dementia patients to take their medication, for example, via a familiar voice and a digital assistant like Cortana. This gives nurses more time for more qualitative care.
- Automatic follow-up of medication can be done via the smartphone, from prescribing over ordering to follow-up of the intake. The effect of medication can also be measured much more accurately. The doctor can also check whether medicines are being taken at the right time.
- In crisis situations, every second counts but ambulances cannot have every form of expertise on board. Via augmented reality, experts from the hospital can assist paramedics while the necessary preparations can be made in the hospital. Connected ambulances can save more lives.
- Smart glasses make remote assistance easier, which increases the efficiency of experts. These are also an ideal means to train and guide less experienced colleagues. Similarly, virtual reality is increasingly finding its way into our health care system for training purposes and even as a tool during operations, e.g. by combining different imaging modalities.
Which innovations can help your company?
Proximus team
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