April 3, 2023
In 2021, equity-led telemonitoring attracted the attention of New Zealand’s Ministry of Health Manatu Hauora. The digital enablement team from Manatu Hauora granted Hato Hone St John funding to develop an equity-led telemonitoring service to improve the health of Maori and Pasifika at high risk of heart attack or stroke.
St John used this funding to establish Manaaki Mamao, which is growing into a national service that GPs from around the country can refer patients to for remote patient monitoring. St John clinicians design personalised treatment plans for each patient in consultation with their GP and use Spritely’s unique technology to manage their care remotely.
When it’s done right, this model of care is cost effective and highly scalable.
Telemonitoring that is accessible and usable by anyone regardless of their personal circumstances. It enables participation even when people have no access to devices, limited experience with technology and poor connectivity. This makes it particularly suitable for priority populations including Maori and Pasifika, rural populations, older people, and those in financial hardship.
It connects hard to reach people with health professionals on a regular basis. Access to healthcare is a key determinant of health. Many people with poor access to healthcare also struggle to manage chronic conditions. They can also struggle to rehabilitate from adverse events or surgical procedures. Equity-led telemonitoring improves health outcomes by making personalised healthcare easily accessible from home.
Equity-led telemonitoring can reduce the overall cost of supporting patient health when it is used to augment in person care. For hard-to-reach patients, it saves a huge amount of time. Clinicians can have more interactions without being overburdened; patients are engaged and better able to manage their own health and this leads to more timely interventions that drive savings right across the health system.
Providing patients with a tablet and a connected medical device to take home might not seem that scalable, but it can be with a platform like Spritely. Spritely leases 4G ready tablets that are pre-provisioned with their co-designed RPM software so that healthcare providers can enroll patients and allocate them a tablet in under 3 minutes. Wireless medical devices such as blood pressure monitors are permanently connected (no BT pairing required). And when patients return their tablet, it can be logged out and reallocated to the next patient.
Equity-led telemonitoring, when deployed correctly with support from clinicians, can meaningfully improve care for vulnerable people in the community. This can change the lives of patients and make a material difference to the wellbeing of clinicians. Please get in touch if you want to learn more about how Spritely is pioneering equity-led telemonitoring,
