Home monitoring is very effective in people with chronic diseases. This is apparent from numerous observations by doctors, nurses and patients. And an interim evaluation of a pilot with home monitoring of the LangeLand Hospital for COPD patients also clearly points in that direction. Home monitoring is also successful in other places. At the Spaarne Gasthuis, for example, forty COPD patients, for whom traveling to the hospital is too strenuous a task, have been monitored more and more for almost a year now. The hospital uses the digital platform Compaan for this. The home monitoring app SanaCoach will be used in the pilot at the Langeland hospital.
More disease insight
Thanks to this app, patients have to go to the hospital less often. It is also interesting that due to all the data they receive from home monitoring, patients themselves gain more insight into their illness and experience more autonomy. Mr Ronk, who has COPD himself, says: “Home monitoring has become indispensable for me. I wouldn’t want to be without it anymore. Filling out the questionnaire on the app is very helpful. I can immediately see if my condition is stable or if it is getting worse. This can prevent a lot of trouble. I also understand my illness better because there is a lot of information in the app.”
It is essential that healthcare providers are immediately notified if COP patients are getting worse. The SanaCoach COPD app is used for home monitoring. On this, patients register lung measurements themselves and also answer questions. A nurse from Langeland checks this questionnaire and calls the patient if there is an abnormal result. By keeping a close eye on things, home monitoring can ensure that COPD patients will have to go to hospital less often in the future.
Low-threshold care for COPD patients
Of course, checks will remain with the pulmonologist, but the remote monitoring ensures interim contact and adjustment of the treatment plan without the need for a visit to the hospital. Monique Meijer and Agnes Kulik-Koek are lung nurses from the LangeLand Hospital and say: “We are able to identify earlier if a patient is getting worse via home monitoring. Healthcare is becoming more accessible, because patients can contact us directly via the app. This allows us to pay attention to our patients in a more structured way and at fixed times, resulting in good continuity of care.”
Difficult to link with HIS
In practice, home monitoring appears to be safe and pleasant for all parties. For the five participating GP practices, however, the added value is slightly less because COPD patients who are under the control of their GP usually have relatively few complaints. For them, the added value of home monitoring lies mainly in prevention: preventing complaints from worsening. COPD patients can thus remain under the care of the general practitioner or practice nurse for longer instead of the medical specialist in the hospital. The pilot does show that working with the home monitoring tool GPs and practice nurses creates extra work because there is no link between SanaCoach and the General Practitioner Information System (HIS) Medicom. The pilot will run until the end of the year and the results will be further evaluated in the near future.
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