The Inhealthcare hypertension service allows the patient to use a blood pressure device and, using a choice of communication channels, relays the readings back to the clinician. If readings breach personalised thresholds, clinicians are notified and can step in as necessary with medical intervention.
Studies have suggested that ‘white coat syndrome’ is real, showing blood pressure measurements taken by a doctor are 50 per cent less accurate than when taken at home.
Patients can use SMS, an app, online portal or automated phone call. Giving patients a choice of how they interact with the service, widens digital access.
Case study: NHS Scotland
NHS Scotland has partnered with Inhealthcare to develop and expand a range of remote monitoring pathways to help patients safely manage their health needs at home. A growing number of patients are being offered Connect Me, the remote monitoring programme for Scotland, as a means to interact and communicate with their healthcare professionals. The programme enables people to have more choice and greater flexibility on how and where they manage their health and wellbeing.
The nationally funded programme is being used to monitor the effects of starting or stopping treatments, issue reminders or encourage and enable clinicians to spot flare-ups so treatment can be delivered sooner.
The programme also supports healthcare professionals to identify changes in health and offer advice and support during treatment plans.
Connect Me offers a number of pathways including Heart Failure, Prostate Cancer, Urogynaecology, and Core Home Monitoring (multi physiological readings) across primary and secondary care services. One of the pathways is a national primary care blood pressure monitoring service, which to date has monitored more than 100,000 patients.
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Case study: Surrey Heartlands
Following a successful pilot, Inhealthcare worked with Surrey Heartlands Integrated Care System to launch a new remote monitoring BP@Home service for NHS patients to manage high blood pressure at home.
Using a simple device provided by the NHS, patients record their blood pressure and heart rate readings on a twice-daily basis for four consecutive days.
Patients submit these for clinical review in a way that suits them best either by email, SMS text message, app or direct telephone contact, making the service fully inclusive.
Inhealthcare analyses the readings, calculates averages, alerts healthcare professionals if thresholds are breached and uploads readings onto GP systems.
It sends feedback and helpful information to patients, asks them to test themselves again if necessary or contact their clinical teams or NHS 111.
The service allows patients to monitor their condition on an on-going, long-term basis rather than as a “one-off”. The service connects patients with clinicians and enables safe and secure sharing of health data.
An NHS evaluation found that of the 2,100 patients from high-risk cohorts who engaged with the service between October 2021 and December 2022, nearly half are now being treated to target. This means they are providing green category readings for both systolic and diastolic blood pressure.
56% of these achieved this through adopting lifestyle changes such as increasing exercise or changing their diet.
Surrey Heartlands ICS believes that expanding the service could help thousands of patients to manage their conditions, improve their health, reduce the incidence of clinical events such as death, heart attack or stroke, over five years and save millions of pounds in reduced use of NHS services.
The service is expected to save many hours of administrative work by automating tasks and allowing staff.
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