Telehealth Newer Technologies Essay

• Please respond to the discussion by Validate an idea with your own experience and additional research, Which is- using new telehealth technologies like Remote Patient Monitoring from Alivecor to monitor patients through apps and devices. https://clinicians.alivecor.com/documents/AliveCor%20Remote%20Patient%20Monitoring%20Guide%20V1.pdf https://alivecor.com/research/ As in the discussion a patient was shown how to monitor their vital signs and weight. With the Alivecor device and app a person with Atriafibrulation can be monitored with remote access. With this application a detrimental heart rhythms can be detected early and subsequently save lives. Also psychiatric nurse practitioners could use this technology during an outpatient office visit before prescribing antipsychotics that need to know what the QTc interval is prior to prescribing these meds. The QTc interval can be seen through the Alivecors device and app in real time. Psych NPs can then prescribe the much-needed medication in a efficient manner. This is the discussion Telehealth is a newer term in healthcare that is coming into its own rapidly. “A significant increase is expected in the use of information technology tools in nursing venues in the coming decades” (McGonigle & Mastrian, 2015, p. 317). There are many different ways that telehealth is being used, from simply a phone call to implanted devices, and many things in between. Patients are being sent home with devices that monitor heart rate, blood pressure, and weight that require the patient to stand on a scale, hold a device, or check their blood pressure. Telehealth Newer Technologies Essay. All of these can be manipulated by human error. Another device is an implantable cardioMEMS that measure the pressure in the patient’s pulmonary artery, and all the patient has to do is lay down on a mat to transmit the information. Many of the patients that are now using the telehealth equipment are the elderly. “Younger, more highly educated and affluent seniors use technology more readily and across broader platforms than the older old, who as a group tend to be less affluent, less educated, and often have a significantly greater burden of chronic illness and disability” (Greenwald, Stern, Clark, & Sharma, 2018, p. 2). Technology has advanced so much that many elderly know how to use a smartphone efficiently and can use an app to upload information for the physician to see. Telehealth and the advances being made should help our patients improve their quality of life and also be more engaged in their healthcare. I work on a cardiac med-surg unit that has a strong focus on congestive heart failure (CHF). We, along with most other institutions, struggle with readmissions. We strive for 60 minutes of education per visit, have instituted a biweekly heart failure class. We are now entering a phase where we are utilizing telehealth. “Health professionals, particularly nurses, can move mHealth into mainstream healthcare by understanding its potential to change the landscape of health intervention delivery” (Meetoo, Tylance, & Abuhaimid, 2018, p. 1176). A new initiative that we recently started is to screen our patients that are going home to see if they can participate in a telehealth program. The program sets them up with a tablet, a scale, and a blood pressure cuff. A nurse comes to their room before discharge to teach them how and when to use the equipment. The patient is to weigh themselves and check their blood pressure every day, and the results are automatically uploaded by Bluetooth to their account. A nurse at their primary care physician’s office monitors the data and has a conversation with the physician if the patient’s weight begins to rise to help prevent the patient from coming back to the hospital for a CHF exacerbation. The nurse and the patient are in contact also so that the patient can communicate problems they are having, or how they are feeling. We just started it about a month ago, so I don’t have any data on how well it is working. Some of the barriers we are currently facing are our patient population; many of them do not go home after discharge. They go to rehabs, SNF, or even assisted living. Our patients are on average about 80 years old, with a significant portion above 85. The program we are instituting requires the patient to be at home. Another obstacle is that currently only two primary care physicians offices are participating in the program. We hope that more offices will begin participating. Greenwald, P., Stern, M. E., Clark, S., & Sharma, R. (2018). Older adults and technology: In telehealth, they may not be who you think they are. International Journal of Emergency Medicine, 11(2), 1-4. Telehealth Newer Technologies Essay. https://DOI.org/10.1186/s12245-017-0162-7 McGonigle, D., & Mastrian, K. (2015). Nursing informatics and the foundation of knowledge (Third ed.). Burlington, MA: Jones and Barlett Learning. Meetoo, D., Rylance, R., & Abuhaimid, H. A. (2018). Health care in a technological world. British Journal of Nursing, 27(20), 1172–1177. https://doi-org.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/10.12968/bjon.2018.27.20.1172

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Telehealth newer technologies

Telehealth refers to the different kinds of communication technologies that can gather and exchange information within the health care environment. Within the concept of Telehealth is the notion of remote patient monitoring as a health care delivery approaches that uses information technologies to collect information on patients and outside the traditional medical care setting (Holzemer & Klainberg, 2014). In fact, the notion focuses on shifting medical care away from the traditional setting in medical facilities into the patients’ residences, workplaces and play places. To be more precise, it is concerned with building a commination bridge that links the traditional physical health care setting to the locations where patients carry out their normal daily activities. Perhaps the greatest merit of this technology is that it leverages information technologies in a manner that allows the patients to be comfortable while aiding them in managing their health (Davis & LaCour, 2014). Understandably, the enhanced comfort levels improves the patients’ engagement levels while also improving the quality of care since more accurate and complete patient information is collected (Lee, Greenfield & Pappa, 2018). In this case, not only does remote patient monitoring incentivize the patient to better engage with their own health, it also better equips medical personnel to understand and manage the patients’ care needs using a constant stream of accurate and up-to-date data that offers a better awareness of the current health status. For that matter, the technology offers medical personnel the chance to determine what is happening to the patient at the earliest opportunity thus enabling them to accurately measure current occurrences and ask relevant questions (Wessel & Manthey, 2015). As a result, remote patient monitoring is a useful tool for use among medical facilities since it offers them the power to know the actual health status of their patients in real time. Telehealth Newer Technologies Essay.

References

Davis, N. & LaCour, M. (2014). Health information technology (3^rd ed.). Amsterdam: Elsevier.

Holzemer, S. & Klainberg, M. (2014). Community health nursing: an alliance for health (2^nd ed.). Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning.

Lee, P., Greenfield, G. & Pappas, Y. (2018). The impact of telehealth remote patient monitoring on glycemic control in type 2 diabetes: a systematic review and meta-analysis of systematic reviews of randomised controlled trials. BMC Health Services Research, 18, 495. DOI: 10.1186/s12913-018-3274-8

Wessel, S. & Manthey, M. (2015). Primary nursing: person-centered care delivery system design. Minneapolis, MN: Creative Health Care Management. Telehealth Newer Technologies Essay.