Remote patient monitoring (RPM) is a cornerstone of modern
healthcare that involves tracking and managing patients’ health
outside the clinical setting through digital devices, such as
handheld medical devices and mobile applications. By enabling remote
medical practitioners to monitor their patient’s health in a timely
fashion, collect accurate data in real-time, and provide immediate
intervention and care whenever possible, RPM has gradually become a
vital part of effective healthcare agreements and reduced healthcare
expenses.
The recent surge in the telehealth solutions market has paved the
way for the integration of remote patient monitoring (RPM) tools.
However, with the diverse needs of healthcare providers,
off-the-shelf solutions are no longer sufficient.
Healthcare software product development
is not just a preference, but a necessity. It is crucial to meet a
range of clinical requirements and compliance standards, and to
customize an RPM system based on specific patient needs. Developing
custom telehealth solutions will not only support the utilization of
RPM with greater functionality and effectiveness, but also enhance
the prospects of implementing quality, patient-centric care.
It involves collecting, transmitting, and ‘monitoring’ patient
health data from a distance – utilizing wearable devices, mobile
apps, or other digital tools. Specifically, we use the term ‘remote
patient monitoring’ (RPM) tools to refer to the use of such
technology. For instance, this could involve continuously monitoring
blood pressure, heart rate, respiratory rate, pulse oximetry,
stimulant levels, blood glucose levels, or other critical health
metrics and parameters. Such monitoring can, for example, record and
track patients’ health vital signs or parameters and transmit them
to healthcare providers in real-time – allowing healthcare
professionals to assess patients’ health status, identify risks, and
take pre-emptive action outside of the healthcare facility, or in
the patient’s home environment. This approach can be useful for
patients suffering from chronic illnesses, experiencing loneliness
or isolation, with low-quality social support or health literacy, or
who may not be proficient in navigating the health system or seeking
help. RPM offers patients numerous benefits and advantages – from
facilitating proactive care, earlier detection of health issues, and
the ability to address those issues in a timely manner – to simply
improving health outcomes and quality of life. By allowing
physicians to continuously track patients’ health data in real-time
for days, weeks, or months, health professionals can make more
informed and better-tuned decisions, provide more precise and
targeted care, enhance the overall quality of care, and bring down
healthcare costs.
Remote patient monitoring (RPM) offers a host of benefits, from
improved health outcomes and operational efficiencies to cost
savings and reductions in unnecessary hospital readmissions. By
identifying and managing health issues before they escalate to the
point of an emergency department visit, RPM is a powerful tool for
proactive care. It also effectively monitors, manages, and improves
conditions of chronic diseases, helping patients better track their
conditions and adhere to treatment plans. This has led to improved
self-care and health status. Moreover, RPM provides a robust conduit
for sustained care between patients and providers, enabling
continuity of care that is adapted and tailored to the ebb and flow
of individuals’ care needs. RPM is consistent with a move towards
personalized, preventive, and effective care, ultimately improving
health outcomes and reducing healthcare costs.
For more specific applications, generic telehealth solutions might
be underpowered. There are myriad types of clinical workflows,
patient preferences, healthcare settings, and electronic health
record (EHR) systems that off-the-shelf platforms might not be
flexible enough to support. It’s certainly possible that a generic
telehealth solution might meet all the functionality needs of a
small clinical lab or family practice. However, there will always be
rules, settings, and personalized workflows that will entail certain
implementation complexities. This kind of innovation is not evolving
due to a lack of demand but because it is newly fashionable. In the
best-case scenario, a simple solution that works for healthcare’s
lowest common denominator will be sufficient to fulfill the basic
needs of remote patient monitoring (RPM). The design specifications
will be minimal, and nontechnical staff will be able to handle the
implementation. Human work will be minimized, and unintended
consequences will be limited due to the straightforward nature of
the system. But what about a probabilistic discussion of the
cost-efficacy of tailored programs? It’s a matter of inefficiency,
excessive manual workarounds, and suboptimal patient experiences,
which will delay or jeopardize these burgeoning RPM efforts.
While off-the-shelf telehealth software might take some tinkering
within clinics and hospitals to accommodate varying workflows,
custom telehealth software can be built from the ground up to
integrate directly with existing systems (such as electronic health
records [EHRs] and practice management) so that data from the RPM
tools automatically and accurately feeds into the broader patient
health record, providing continuity of care.
Custom healthcare software solutions
can also be built to adapt to specific workflows, including
regulatory and compliance obligations, like HIPAA, by which all
patient data must be protected in order to comply with the law.
Addressing these sometimes complex requirements can not only smooth
overwork- and data-flow processes but it can also mitigate human
error, allowing for a more reliable and user-friendly process
overall. By reducing the burden on patients by using the tech
seamlessly (lowering the rejection rate) and granting clinicians a
richer data set for their analysis, the quality of care is enhanced,
and outcomes are improved.
Data integration and interoperability refers to the ability of all kinds of devices – including remote patient monitoring devices such as wearables, telehealth devices, and home health medical equipment, and electronic health records (EHR) – to simply talk to each other and work synergistically in a healthcare setting. Custom telehealth solutions ensure that data captured by many remote patient monitoring devices is seamlessly integrated into a patient’s electronic health record, resulting in care delivery that promotes data-driven clinical care by providing a unified view of the patient’s health status. The siloed datasets that exist between various healthcare systems are minimized as healthcare custom software development allows the gathering, processing, analysis, management, and transmission of data to care managers and clinicians who must make important decisions based on the synthesis of comprehensive patient data.
A major benefit of custom healthcare mobile app development is real-time patient data and alerts. Customary software design can be built to monitor health measures in real-time and trigger immediate alerts to primary caregivers for metrics that rise out of certain predetermined parameters. This feature allows providers to swiftly intervene and modify treatment plans, which is especially valuable for monitoring chronic conditions and taking action before acute health problems arise. Keeping health newsworthy in real time enables providers to continually be apprised of their patients' current status so that they can respond accordingly.
Patient engagement tools are essential to many custom telehealth solutions. These tools usually mean having dedicated patient digital platforms, mobile applications, and communication tools built into your television software. Patient engagement tools enable direct, convenient, and authentic interactions between providers and patients. Patients can retrieve their health information, track their vitals, and communicate with care teams more proactively through these platforms. Those custom healthcare software development services that have excellent patient and user interfaces are known to increase the uptake of consumer engagement, compliance with treatment plans, and overall satisfaction with care.
Healthcare is a highly regulated domain, and protecting patient’s data is paramount. Custom telehealth software can be built with all the latest security features, such as robust encryption, multi-factor authentication, and regular security audits to secure the system from unauthorized access. By focusing on compliance features from the beginning, custom builds to ensure that the data integrity and handling meet all the compliance requirements to mitigate the risks and avoid non-compliance.
When organizations developed custom telehealth solutions, they had
to sort out a variety of complex challenges in
custom software development for healthcare
that presented major barriers to implementation. One major issue
that had to be dealt with was data security. Since health
information is so sensitive, it’s critical to ensure that patient
data is not lost to breaches or hacks by securing it properly. To
protect sensitive data in compliance with standards set by HIPAA and
similar regulations, organizations need advanced encryption protocol
techniques, two-factor authentication, and security audits and
updates to meet the challenge. And when it comes to cybersecurity,
the challenges will likely keep multiplying. To combat such rapidly
emerging vulnerabilities, it will be critical to adopt a proactive
approach. Security patches and vulnerability analysis will have to
keep pace with constantly evolving capabilities.
Device compatibility is another issue: telehealth solutions might
need to work with a range of medical devices or health monitoring
tools from different manufacturers, each with its own protocols and
data formats. Ensuring that bespoke solutions can interface with
these heterogeneous device arrays will be vital to the reliability
and quality of the data collected from these patients, as well as to
effective remote monitoring. Here, we require flexible APIs and
middleware to mediate between devices and software and test
different devices and platforms against each other to validate
compatibility.
User experience matters too. Custom telehealth solutions should be
built with users in mind: patients and their care teams. The
interface should be built. It should be tested with real users,
redesigned based on their feedback, and iterated upon until the
design elements help users reach their goals with minimal effort.
The right training and support for implementation can also mean the
difference between marginal adoption and widespread success.
However, these challenges can be met through a considered
development strategy, including regional security solutions, device
interoperability, and a user-first design approach. Custom
telehealth can provide current, remote patient monitoring services
that are effective, reliable, and secure.
Telemedicine – also known as telehealth or RPM (remote patient
monitoring) – is becoming even more effective thanks to the
increasing availability and development of AI-driven analysis,
wearables, and IoT (Internet of Things) in healthcare. AI-driven
analysis is growing more able to analyze large volumes of health
data. By doing so, it can predict patient trends or issues before
they need to be addressed by healthcare professionals. AI can also
improve diagnostics related to the likelihood of outcomes related to
health and medication and even assist in providing patients with
timely and personalized healthcare at scale.
Alongside telehealth, the rise of wearable devices is one of the
defining tech trends of the past decade, and its impact on
telehealth or RPM is going to be just as profound. In the past
couple of years, new technologies have reached the point where they
can power wearables that are far more advanced than smartwatches or
Fitbits. Today’s wearable devices can use sensitive and advanced
sensors to monitor health metrics such as heart rate, blood
pressure, glucose levels, sleep patterns, and physical activity. And
they can do this over much longer stretches of time. What this has
created is a demand driven by both patients and their physicians for
health metrics that were previously very difficult to observe in
real-time and over extended periods, actionable data on their
health, wearables connected with telehealth platforms can empower
patients to become active also as participants in their health
monitoring.
Beyond RPM, IoT increases healthcare efficiency through greater
interoperability by connecting medical devices and sensors to a
central network to exchange healthcare data without barriers.
IoT-enabled devices can be configured to communicate automatically
with the telehealth system rather than patients manually entering
raw data, thus ensuring data from disparate sources is aggregated
and analyzed as a unit.
Customizing
healthcare mobile app development services
to match these trends can help providers stay on top of these
advancements and anticipate the patient and health systems needs of
the future. Custom telehealth solutions have an advantage in that
they can be built to work with AI, wearables, and the IoT technology
of the future. As new technologies emerge, they can be quickly
layered on top of systems, functionality can be scaled up or down
easily as needed, and systems will always be backward compatible
with the latest technologies. Custom solutions allow health
providers to increase the likelihood of using the best tools of the
future to help deliver better quality, future-proofed care.
To sum up, creating custom software for RPM solves the issues of standard RPM and provides a tailored, efficient, and responsive service. Furthermore, custom software solves the issues of standard RPM by providing ease in collecting and integrating data from multiple devices, engaging providers in real-time monitoring of multiple patients, and ensuring robust security against cyberattacks. Since technology is evolving in telehealth by adopting tools such as AI, wearables, and IoT, custom software plays a major role in adapting to the changing landscape and ensuring that healthcare keeps evolving with technological advancements in RPM to provide better patient outcomes. Adopting a custom telehealth solution not only facilitates better care delivery but also helps healthcare providers be at the forefront of technological advancements in RPM.