Healthcare systems globally are facing similar issues – how to ensure delivery of high quality care despite rising demand and limited resources. As a result, telemedicine, with its ability to expand access to care and increase utilization of physicians, is gaining support and adoption around the world.
In fact, a new research report found that the global market for telemedicine technologies stood at $17.8B in 2014 is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate of 18.4 percent by 2020, fueled by a shortage of physicians in rural and remote areas, the high prevalence of chronic diseases, growing elderly populations, increasing numbers of smartphone users and the need for improved quality services.1
Remote Patient Monitoring, one of many telemedicine applications in use today, allows care providers to monitor patients outside of clinical settings, in the home or elsewhere, using technology that can collect, store and share health data in real time. Patients with chronic diseases, patients in rural areas with conditions requiring specialists or patients with limited mobility are key candidates for Remote Patient Monitoring.
The OpenTele platform for Remote Patient Monitoring system provides these services and more. With the integration of VidyoWorksTM, OpenTele’s platform can facilitate video interactions between clinicians and patients while simultaneously collecting patient data. This seemingly small, additional capability, however, has led to powerful results.
Vidyo’s dynamic adaptation technology, which provides stable, maximum quality video communication over Wi-Fi and cellular connected clients, allows care providers to perform immediate and comprehensive reviews of a patient’s performance, improving outcomes and peace of mind for patients. Together with Vidyo, OpenTele is able to support the weakest and most vulnerable patients, those that might be too weak or ill to manage their own monitoring system due to their medical condition.
Extending monitoring and diagnostic abilities to patients who normally would not be able to participate in such a program is central to ensuring the health of the population and sustaining our healthcare systems. In Denmark, adoption of telemedicine applications like OpenTele’s has led to lowered hospital re-admission rates, increased patient satisfaction and provided cost savings to providers and patients due to reduced complications. Patients are empowered, working daily to improve their performance and better manage their condition. In fact, OpenTele’s ability to reduce hospital re-admission rates has been so successful that the platform has been adopted as a national Danish standard for Remote Patient Monitoring.
With the whole Danish Nation as a committed reference case, OpenTeleHealth continues to expand its platform globally, bringing the advantages of remote patient monitoring and Vidyo-enabled communication to the global market.
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