Health NZ expands use of virtual wards

NEWS - eHealthNews.nz editor Rebecca McBeth

Health New Zealand Te Whatu Ora Tairāwhiti (Gisborne) is using remote patient monitoring to go live with virtual hospital beds in July.

Health NZ chief executive Margie Apa recently travelled to London where she visited virtual wards, as part of the organisation’s plans to expand their use in New Zealand.

The Āhuru Mōwai Hospital in the Home (HitH) service will initially be supporting 3-4 people a week, with a view to grow the service over the following 12 months, says clinical lead for Tairāwhiti HitH programme Erik McClain

He says Tairāwhiti has several different projects requiring the use of remote monitoring.

“Each project was devised to improve care of patients with chronic disease that resulted in hospital presentations, and for acute care at home,” he says.

“Studies have shown that remote monitoring and diligent follow up of these patient cohorts results in better outcomes and less hospital admissions.”

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Tairāwhiti is using the Propell+Persona vital sign monitoring solution for Hospital-In-The-Home. The technology monitors heart rate, oxygen saturation, temperature, weight, blood sugar level and blood pressure.

“The need for this remote patient monitoring solution will be determined on a case by case basis,” says McClain.

The vitals are blue-toothed to the tablet provided to the patient. Using the Persona dashboard, local clinicians are then able to see the vital signs, in real time, to inform clinical decision making.

“This is available to clinicians from wherever they may be, on the road, at home (on-call), in the office,” he says.

“The data is kept confidential and is available to the clinician for the duration of acute care. Once the patient is discharged from Āhuru Mōwai HitH , the patient’s personal information is removed from Persona and the vitals are recorded in our clinical portal.”

Apa visited the virtual ward at Chelsea and Westminster NHS Foundation Trust in May.

In a LinkedIn post, founder of health tech consulting group Digital Care, Tara Donnelly, said Apa was seeking to make more of technology, to provide healthcare closer to home for New Zealanders, and was keen to learn about the experience in the NHS of scaling virtual wards.

“The team at Chelsea and Westminster have put real thought into how their services are designed to maximise patient uptake and this included creating and recruiting to the role of on-boarding nurse, which I was keen to share with (Apa). The scale of service is great, having cared for 5,500 patients since they first established tech-enabled home care during the pandemic,” said Donnelly.

Picture: Margie Apa talks to nurses during a London virtual ward visit (credit Tara Donnelly)

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