New app supports remote monitoring trials

eHealthNews.nz: Digital Patient

Tuesday, 21 November 2023

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NEWS - eHealthNews.nz editor Rebecca McBeth

An initiative called Piki Te Ora is piloting remote patient monitoring (RPM) with 60 participants in four communities across the motu using a newly developed app to gather and share their health information.

Te Whatu Ora and Te Aka Whai Ora are partnering on the project to support people with long-term health conditions to stay well in the community and empower participants to take an active role in managing their health.

Te Aka Whai Ora has invested $2.3 million into four pilots with 15 users each located in Te Tai Tokerau - Northland, Te Tai Rāwhiti-Gisborne, Matakaoa - East Coast, and Whare Kauri - Chatham Islands. The trials will run for two years.

Participants use a mobile application called Piki Te Ora to input and upload their personal and health information from a range of devices that monitor things like vital signs, symptoms, and use of medication.

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The monitoring data is securely transmitted to a FHIR-based central data store where it can be accessed by healthcare providers such as GPs.

Jon Herries, emerging health technology and innovation, says this central store was built to support the Covid-19 care in the community programme and prevents numerous copies of the information being sent around the system. Instead they are adding a new template so that healthcare providers involved in the consumer’s care can access data from one location.

Wade Reweti, Te Whatu Ora senior service designer, says consumers have access to their data via the app and can choose whether to share it with their health providers.

He says the initiative aims to reduce hospital admissions by monitoring people with long-term conditions in the community.

In Northland alone, the cost of preventable hospital admissions is estimated to be more than $2.7 million a year with more than 5000 acute presentations that are considered preventable with early intervention in primary care.

The pilot in the Far North has already gone live with 15 rural and isolated participants with cardiac conditions using smart watches and scales to monitor their health, and the East Coast pilot is due to go live in November 2023.

Herries says a key problem with RPM has been that there are numerous products on the market that provide a solution for one diagnosis, such as asthma, and collect data in an app.

However, these apps and devices often do not allow data sharing with the rest of the health system and may not be connected to a person’s NHI, so information collected cannot be linked with their electronic medical records.

The recent launch of Google Health Connect, alongside experience in building the Covid Tracer App, provided an opportunity for Te Whatu Ora to develop its own app to support RPM in New Zealand, he says.

The Piki Te Ora app is designed for both Android and iOS platforms. Te Whatu Ora engaged Alphero to build the Android application.

“Google Health Connect means we do not have to have to manage all the devices ourselves: as long as the device can talk to the phone, we can pick up the data and it works in a similar way that healthkit works on iOS,” Herries explains.

The app can link to a number of devices on the market including smart watches, smart scales, and continuous blood glucose monitors and collate the information for the patient to view and share.

Project manager Hayley Johnson says the healthcare providers involved in the pilots chose which devices to use and can set thresholds or alerts for specific health parameters for each
participant. If any data falls outside normal ranges or triggers an alert, they can take appropriate action early.

“We visited each site to show participants everything that is available and did some mock ups of how it might work,” she explains.

Equity advisor Rawiri Kerehoma-Hoerara says the creation story is being told through a Te Ao Māori lens: moving from Te Kore (the great void) through to Te Pō (the long night), to Te Hinātore (the glimmering) and finally to Te Ao (the world of light).

He says the name Piki Te Ora was chosen by whānau involved in the initiative and means to lift the health of the people who use it.