South Canterbury trials wearables for ‘at-risk’ older people

eHealthNews.nz: Digital Patient

South Canterbury trials wearables for ‘at-risk’ older people

Sunday, 26 September 2021

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NEWS - eHealthNews.nz editor Rebecca McBeth

South Canterbury District Health Board (SCDHB) is going to pilot wearable devices with groups of at-risk older people living in the community.

Director of primary health partnerships at the DHB, Ruth Kibble, says South Canterbury has an older and ageing population, and the pilot is part of thinking differently about how to keep the pressures off the hospital.

The DHB has selected a coin-sized wearable device that sticks on a person’s chest and can monitor a range of clinical parameters such as; heart rate, sleep, activity, gait analysis, body position, fall detection, skin temperature and activity level.

The device is platform agnostic and not currently available in New Zealand. The DHB is finalising the contract so the vendor cannot yet be named.

The Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) pilot study has also gone to the Health and Disability Ethics Committee for approval.

Once approved, there will a cohort of around 50 patients total in the study, including rural, Māori, and urban.

They will be older people who live independently, but are at risk of falls and ‘funny turns’ and will likely have some services/ supports around them, Kibble explains.

The aim of this pilot is to improve the ability of clinicians to detect patient deterioration early and support proactive clinical intervention to reduce non-admitted ED attendances for patients at risk of deterioration. Also, to give the person and their whanau/family greater confidence to keep them well in the community.

Patients and their whanau and primary care providers will all be able to access the data (if the patient consents) and alerts will indicate if something is potentially wrong.

“We wanted the patient monitoring to not only be clinical grade, but to be passive for the patient, with sufficient artificial intelligence algorithms to give us early indications of a change or decline in health status,” explains Kibble.

The DHB is working with EY on the pilot project. A small clinical team identified the patients that would benefit the most from RPM and EY led a design thinking workshop, including consumer representation, to look at patient pathways.

“We designed and prototyped a model of care that had remote patient monitoring and apps, and then we tested it with a consumer story,” she says.

“This is about testing something that could be scalable across the health system in New Zealand.”

The pilot study has attracted Ministry of Health sustainability funding.

Hear Ruth Kibble speak about the South Canterbury wearables project at Digital Health Week in Wellington from November 29 – December 1, 2021. REGISTER NOW.