Saving lives with IT

Jonathan Ritchie, CIO of Mastercall Healthcare, explains how Bluetooth-connected devices can be used to remotely triage patients, potentially saving the NHS time and money, and saving lives

The Covid-19 pandemic has put incredible strain on the NHS, and it remains to be seen how the organisation will cope as we head towards the winter months, a time when health services traditionally feel extra pressure.

The colder months bring increased cases of 'flu and other illnesses, generating a corresponding uplift in hospital admissions, care home visits and pressures on GP services.

Jonathan Ritchie, CIO of Mastercall Healthcare, an ‘out of hospital' healthcare provider, explains that this traditional cycle could be eased with the use of new digital triage technology.

"About a year ago I asked why we don't do more around remote monitoring to help with the traditional winter pressure on health services," begins Ritchie. " I was told that the technology hasn't been extensively used to facilitate this, but in the era of Skype, Zoom and others I thought we should at least be trying to encourage video triages," he adds.

Ritchie examined the marketplace, describing his experience as being "bombarded by tech companies" as they offered various types of remote monitoring services. But none were quite right.

"From solutions we looked at, I could not find a solution that had the right devices on offer, or if they did, they didn't have the right application at the back end. The options just were not there at that that time.

So Ritchie went further afield. Drawing on his previous career in the oil and gas industry (he was Group Head of IT at Briggs Marine), he turned to a company in Norway.

"I'd spent some time in Scandinavia, and my experience of Norwegian tech was that they always appeared to be more advanced in terms of their clean delivery of technology. So I made some enquiries and found a firm called Dignio which had an extensive footprint for driving remote monitoring transformation in Oslo Care Homes in Norway, which I believed would drive our Technology Enhanced Living Service in the UK to the benefit of our patients"

At this pre-Covid time, Dignio had no presence in the UK, but Ritchie could see the technology's potential. The Dignio solution is an app which connects to devices to assist with chronic disease management and other conditions. It collects patient data which is used by local care workers, reducing the requirement for doctors to be called out.

Ritchie explains that the technology is now being used to collect data across a range of health functions.

"We have devices which can test blood oxygen and heart rate, temperature, weight, lung capacity and more. The data goes to the app which has a red, amber green system to highlight any issues."

Mastercall provides the Bluetooth devices that collect the data, and iPads to display it. Crucially, the data is also sent to its digital hub, where a team of nurses monitor the real-time data coming from patients.

"If they see a warning then a nurse can make a video call to ask them to take the test again, send a clinician in, or even send an ambulance depending on the urgency."

This not only saves on GP visits, usually charged at around £100 per hour, but also reduces hospital visits, and can free up hospital beds, since patients can potentially be sent home earlier with less risk, given that their vital signs can be monitored.

It's early days, but the system has probably already saved at least one life, according to Ritchie.

"A Covid patient with breathing difficulties we were monitoring started to deteriorate. Our clinicians asked for new readings, and as a result advised him to go to hospital immediately, where he was put on a ventilator. The clinical team have suggested that his life was saved because of the service. It's great to see that innovation making a difference."

The family even wrote a thank you letter to the team. '[My father is] now in hospital with the best possible chance of receiving the most appropriate support. I genuinely do not feel that this speedy and decisive action would have taken place without the service's involvement and feel that the use of this great technology was key.'

And Ritchie has actually used the system himself.

"Last week I was off with suspected Covid. My blood oxygen was down to 92, whereas the normal is around 98. Having that assurance that you have someone monitoring your health is such a comfort," he says.

The system is live now with Stockport Council, who initially put it in place to help with the winter pressures, but are now also deploying it to help with the pandemic.

"It's taken on another degree of importance," adds Ritchie, arguing that it should be used more broadly. "I believe this is certainly a technology that we should be considering for the support of care homes, chronic disease and long term conditions, and also the pandemic of COVID 19. The advantages of this innovation, and impact on the patient and the health system are certainly evident in our experiences so far."

The next innovation, in pilot phase now, is what Ritchie describes as ‘vital signs patches', small, waterproof patches which sit on the skin, taking data and sending it onto the app via Bluetooth. They can even detect if a patient has a fall.

The solution seems able to save both money and lives at a time when health services have been under pressure like never before. Public health authorities should take note.