High-tech healthcare in your home, says Ritu Bhatia
Recuperating at home after a major surgery was unthinkable till about a decade ago. But, now, remote-monitoring solutions are helping clinicians manage patients while they are in the comfort of their homes. Read on...
Imagine this scenario: You have had a cardiac surgery and spent three days recovering in the ICU. Normally, you would have moved into a room at the hospital to recover. Instead, you opt to recuperate in the comfort of your home. You made this decision in advance, when you heard that a high-tech home care company, Healthcare at Home HCAH) had started services in the city.
Before your discharge, healthcare professionals from HCAH will dialogue with your doctors to obtain essential information on your condition and care requirements. A clinical team will create a customised care plan for you based on this information, which HCAH nurses and other healthcare staff will follow. Your family will also be educated about the signals that constitute a medical emergency.
A decade ago, this situation would have been unimaginable. But now, remote monitoring solutions can help clinicians manage patients with chronic conditions, ensuring a continuum of care from the hospital to the home. Healthcare at
Home (HCAH) has its own IT platform called the Patient Care System, which enables accurate communication of information between patients and their healthcare providers. "Nurses are provided with a 7-inch tablet device which helps them capture patient information in the form of an automated home visit report, which is then shared with the clinicians, allowing for dynamic changes in the treatment," says Dr Gaurav Thukral, head, medical services, HCAH. Home health care agencies are a critical part of the solution to India's healthcare crisis. More people are being diagnosed with chronic diseases that require management and care. Transforming our homes into hubs of healthcare is a cost-effective and practical solution to these problems and the availability of easy to use technology that connects individuals to health care providers makes this a viable option.
Ubiquitous healthcare monitoring is becoming increasingly popular, globally. Most of us have access to tools that monitor daily health parameters such as pulse, respiration, blood pressure and so on. This enables those with lifestyle diseases to keep tabs on their conditions and medical professionals to track the progress of patients. In fact, healthcare technology across the continuum of care is slowly transforming the healthcare business. Providers across
the country are adopting sophisticated technologies that improve the quality of care. The future clearly lies in
customised clinical programmes and advanced data analytics.
Cuttingedge visualisation solutions in radiology and nuclear medicine now allow specialists to engage in interactive reviews online, and cloudbased platforms that enable the implementation of new models of care will soon become the norm. "We are developing competent analytics for a digital health platform which will take personalised medicine to a new height," says Srinivas Prasad, CEO, Philips Innovation Campus, a Bangalore based technology hub for Philips. The benefits of this technology assisted approach to healthcare will enable access to high quality and lower cost care at every stage from screening, diagnostics, to after care. In the case of HCAH, digital documentation on the patient's condition can be analysed by the patient's treating doctor at any time. " Apart from speeding up processes, the IT structure that is in place increases our reliability and addresses safety concerns too as service providers are tracked at all times," says Dr Thukral.
Music can help treat strokes
Music is uplifting all right, but now research to explore its healing effects shows that it can help improve the condition of those with certain chronic diseases.
A concert entitled "The Symphonic Suite for Healing" was developed by an American classically trained pianist Mike Garson who played with David Bowie and neurosurgeon Christopher Duma, with the goal of using it as a form of therapy. A collaboration was born when Duma's Foundation for Neurosciences, Stroke and Recovery commissioned Garson to put together 30 pieces of music, to test the notion that music could help the recall of those with chronic degenerative diseases such as Parkinson's and enable stroke victims to move more easily.
Duma enlisted nearly 100 patients to listen to them and report back on the effect of these on their minds and bodies. Music was reported to trigger the memories of those with Alzheimer's, while people suffering Parkinson's performed better on physical tests.
Though the idea of using music as a means of therapy isn't new, science still hasn't uncovered exactly how music works on the brain. We need a better understanding of the mechanisms that come into play in order to put it to better use for those with chronic degenerative conditions.
New-tech helps moms-to-be
Two new and easy to use technologies hold out hope in India and other countries struggling to bring down high maternal and infant mortality rates; a tele-health application and a compact ultrasound device called VISIQ, which can run on a battery.
Both can help detect high-risk pregnancies and save the life of millions of women and babies in remote areas that lack access to quality healthcare.
While the portable ultrasound machine, VISIQ, was launched by at the Philips Innovation Summit in Bangalore earlier this month, the company's tele-health application has been in use since last year in Malaysia. Using mobile phones, midwives monitor parameters such as blood pressure and fetal heart rate of pregnant women, it makes it easier to determine if a pregnancy is high risk or not.
Running upstairs is now a sport
If you thought that running up the stairs of skyscrapers was only something tourists or idiots did, here's some news for you. There really is a sport called 'tower running', which involves racing up the stairs of skyscrapers.
Tower-running competitions are held in the US, the biggest being the US Bank Tower in LA, the Sears Tower in Chicago and the Empire State Building in New York. Enthusiasts of this sport also exist in Europe, Asia, and South America. This gruelling sport burns up to 1000 calories an hour.