Medical Innovations to Help Patients With Chronic Conditions

Not so long ago, healthcare for patients mainly consisted of doctor's office visits, readily available hospital beds, and low-tech at-home monitoring gadgets. However, the pandemic made it hard to continue treating the chronically ill. Innovations now enable patients to get the needed healthcare.

The Importance of Having Better Healthcare Technology Today

Severe COVID-19 cases have put extra stress on the medical community as the critically ill, unvaccinated masses have flooded hospitals all over the world. Toward the beginning of the pandemic, many patients with chronic healthcare problems died because there were no hospitals with available beds. Elective surgeries were put on hold. People had some trouble getting check-ups or other in-person healthcare.

Telehealth video calls with doctors and others made doctor consultations safe, quick, and easy. However, shorter consultations only relieved part of the overall problem. The medical community needed technology that would come much closer to resolving all capacity problems, not just some of the time constraints. There simply weren't enough doctors, staff, hospital beds, or even supplies to administer healthcare to everybody who needed or wanted it. After months of non-stop required overtime, many healthcare staff members resigned from their jobs, making things worse.

New technology was needed that would essentially do triage and alert doctors only when a patient is in desperate need of medical intervention. Another technology was needed that would enable patients to self-monitor and perform low-level self-treatments. These technologies now exist, and the public is quickly embracing them.

Healthcare Apps

If you are ill, illness-specific apps can help you keep track of your symptoms and coach you in self-treatment. This "mobile health" innovation is a new and fast-growing tech wave that people refer to as "mHealth." Medical research studies have proven that these apps effectively help people cope with their disease, maintain overall wellness and achieve remission.

Here are some specific chronic illnesses and some of the popular apps that are available for them:

● Heart disease – Try Healthy Heart 2

● Cancer – Try chemoWave

● Rheumatoid arthritis – Try MyRA

● Diabetes – Try Glucose Buddy

● Chronic pain – Try Curable

● Irritable bowel disease – Try mySymptoms Food Diary

● Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis – Try patientMpower

You might be interested in these other apps as well:

● Flaredown tracks symptoms and treatments for an unlimited number of medical conditions.

● Moodnotes and SuperBetter increase optimism.

● Calm relieves anxiety and helps you sleep.

● Talkspace facilitates chats with a licensed therapist at a price that's cheaper than a traditional health insurance copay.

● Medisafe reminds you to have your prescriptions refilled and tells you when it's time to take your meds.

● Other apps help you find the closest public restroom, get around in a wheelchair and otherwise better navigate the world.

Remote Patient Monitoring

One of the most helpful technology-based healthcare innovations to come onto the scene lately comes from remote patient monitoring, which electronically transmits real-time physiologic patient data from IoT-connected devices that you would wear or regularly use. The data goes directly into your electronic health record (EHR), eliminating the need for doctor check-up visits, doctor dictations, and medical transcriptionist transcriptions.

Not only do EHRs record real-time vital signs and/or other information, but they also contain all of your healthcare information. This includes your demographics, medical history, family history, laboratory test results, radiology reports, medications used, treatments, progress notes, immunization records, ongoing health problems, and many other things.

Accuhealth is one of the remote patient monitoring companies that provide EHR-connected monitoring devices that monitor weight, pulse ox, glucose, and/or blood pressure. Somebody from this company's 24/7 team of English and Spanish-speaking MAs and nurses will call you to assess the situation whenever you have an abnormal reading. That team member will contact your doctor only when needed.

Accuhealth knows the billing codes that apply to the time their staff member has spent with a healthcare provider's patient. Healthcare providers don't need to worry about RPM codes and other billing details they'll need to generate clean claims when they use Accuhealth because Accuhealth helps providers with the billing of their remote monitoring services.

Technology has stepped up to alleviate some of the strain on healthcare providers caused by the pandemic. Healthcare apps and patient monitoring companies are two such solutions.