On Tuesday, the Mayo Clinic announced that it will conduct a year-long study to determine if home monitoring of patients with chronic conditions can reduce hospitalizations and emergency department visits and lower health care costs, the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal reports (Newmarker, Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal, 2/23).
For the study, Mayo will partner with GE Healthcare to implement Intel’s Intel Health Guide home monitoring technology in the homes of 200 high-risk patients older than age 60 who receive care at Mayo's Rochester, Minn., facility.
Patients will use the Intel Health Guide device daily to measure vital signs and respond to several disease-specific questions. The data will be transmitted to a central database (McGee, InformationWeek, 2/23).
Patients' primary care physicians and a clinical team at Mayo will have secure Web access to the data (Goedert, Health Data Management, 2/23).
Gregory Hanson, a primary researcher on the project at Mayo, said the information will not be integrated into Mayo's electronic health record system, although he said it could be later.
How It Works
The Mayo database will use a color-coded dashboard system to help care providers determine if patients' readings are out of the acceptable range (InformationWeek, 2/23). Care providers then can use the Intel units to videoconference with patients to check in on them sooner, in hopes of avoiding unnecessary ED visits (Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal, 2/23).
The study is believed to be the first of its kind to test home monitoring among a wider patient population with a variety of illnesses (InformationWeek, 2/23).