Technologies for Remote Patient Monitoring

Together with the “Hospital-in-the-Home ” (HITH) initiative at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, we have been working on defining the requirements and exploring the technology for monitoring patients in their home. Despite decades of research on telehealth and remote monitoring, Australia and most other countries still do not have widespread adoption of remote monitoring, which would enable patients to reduce the number of days they spend at a hospital and received care while at home.

Vitals, such as heart rate, body temperature, and breathing rate can be continuously tracked using wearable sensors. Other measures, such as blood pressure and body weight can be measured less frequently using sensor devices in people’s home, i.e., in the environment. Here, motion sensors and (thermal) cameras can give further insights and raise alarms in case of fall detection or other detected emergencies.

We can process incoming data using statistical modelling and machine-learning methods to create data dashboards that help patients self-manage their condition and allow caretakers to monitor the patient’s state and be notified should a clinical state deterioration be detected.

We are in the process of developing the “hospital-in-a-box” platform, which contains the necessary equipment to enable healthcare professionals to monitor patients at home and detect clinical deterioration for periods of up to 4 weeks, and particularly focusing on acute conditions or exacerbations of chronic conditions.