What is Remote Patient Monitoring? Definitions, Market, and Benefits

The global coronavirus pandemic revealed how vital the healthcare services and personnel are and telehealth and remote patient monitoring solutions became relevant overnight. It helped in the rapid shift to lockdowns and social distancing, opening ways for virtual patient care in multiple locations and situations. These changes are here to stay longer with the telemedicine market expected to reach $185 billion by 2026 with a CAGR of 23.5%. The coronavirus also prompted the use of technology as such the Internet of Things — driving remote patient solutions — is expected to reach $543 billion by 2025 with an expected global savings of $63 billion.

The shift to remote patient monitoring also helped the healthcare service providers in mitigating the pandemic challenges. And now, the advantages of remote patient monitoring have become more than just beneficial. However, before jumping into the benefits, let’s understand what remote patient monitoring is.

Remote Patient Monitoring: Definition

Remote patient monitoring is the way of going beyond the traditional healthcare services and integrating them into people’s lives where they live and work. It uses the latest advancements in technology to collect and gather patient data beyond conventional healthcare solutions. Comprising the widely used handheld devices such as smartphones and tablets, remote patient solutions make patients feel comfortable when it comes to managing their health.

Easy mobile hardware, smart software, and digital connection drive remote patient monitoring solutions. This device can be a smartwatch like Fitbit or Apple, or any other wearable device capable of monitoring heart rate, oxygen level, blood pressure, and more. The overall goal of any technology whether it is software or hardware is to provide proactive care, allowing patients to monitor their health all the while reducing cost and physical exertion.

Remote patient monitoring solutions is a vast market and carries huge potential. According to Market Watch, the valuation of such solutions will top $1502 million by 2024 in the U.S.

Key Advantages

Convenience

One of the significant advantages of remote patient monitoring is the convenience at which patients can avail of care. With time and comfort set accordingly, patients are engaged precisely and allow healthcare practitioners to better understand and manage the patients. Care at convenience, wherever, however, and whenever also empowers patients to care for themselves in a safe and reliable manner, contributing to a better healthcare outcome.

Reduced Burden on Healthcare Systems

With remote patient monitoring set in place, patients suffering from chronic conditions can stay out of hospitals as much as possible. By doing so, they help in reducing the burden and making room for other important cases by not taking waiting rooms or hospital beds. This fact further shows the importance in the face of the coronavirus pandemic. Additionally, patients living in remote areas, with limited healthcare resources, and unfit to travel can take advantage of remote healthcare solutions.

Better Healthcare Outcome

Remote Patient Monitoring ensures constant monitoring, reviewing, and using their health data as the basis for developing adequate warnings and guidance to help doctors make decisions.

This method enables a preventive, predictive, and customized approach to the management of every patient’s wellbeing. It allows for early intervention while still offering a better experience for the patients from their home’s comfort and privacy.

This gives the doctors the ability to see what is going on early with patients. In essence, this lets caregivers measure what is happening more clearly and ask more specific questions. In short, remote monitoring of patients allows physicians to know on a regular basis what goes on with patients.

With the ever-high demand for digital technologies, it is important that remote technology is used in practice to ensure a continuous patient experience in the near future. In the years to come, remote patient monitoring will become doctors’ most robust patient management systems, leading to the growing demand for telehealth and remote patient management options.