This is a guest post by Giancarlo De Lio, Chief Visionary Officer at iUGO Health
It seems like everything around us has been disrupted to no end: the way you eat or take a taxi, short and long-term housing, even pets and babies have their own gadgets, apps, and as we’ve recently seen, robot companions. The one industry that’s been lagging behind, to no one’s surprise, is healthcare. Due to complicated process, ancient legacy systems, and lots of red tape, technological innovation has been slow in the past years, but that will soon change as beacons, smart devices, and connected objects become more popular in the way patient care is received and administered. As the paradigm shifts to provide hospital quality care in the home, the industry has to evolve with patient expectations and other technological advancements that impact the quality of care.
When it comes to receiving care in the home following a surgery, ER admission, or treatment patients and their family members face a lot of challenges. From monitoring their loved one’s progress, vitals and stats, as well as managing medications, treatments, and follow up visits, family members become overwhelmed very quickly by all there is to do. Add in different family members and caregivers that are also involved in managing the patient’s health at different points in time and you quickly have a process with broken communication and missing information, putting the patient directly in danger of getting seriously injured or worse.
The solution is to streamline everything into one process and product that patients, family members, caregivers, and everyone else around the table can use, to help that patient get well, make better health decisions, and receive the support they need to stay healthy. Beacons are a fantastic low cost solution for monitoring health in the home, thus helping the patient, especially seniors, do things like remember to take medications, eat regularly and stay hydrated, find their belongings around the house, and prevent potentially fatal serious falls. At current, only a handful of companies have been brave enough to take the plunge to incorporate beacons and internet of things into their offerings, but that number will grow exponentially as more smart devices and objects are introduced in the marketplace.
The demand for solutions in personal health and home care will also grow due to the fact that patients are asked, by their providers, to be more involved in self monitoring and reporting. From keeping track of weight and blood pressure, to monitoring sugar levels and nutrition, patients and their families are directly involved in the health outcomes of that patient. Self monitoring and reporting are great ways for the patient to engage with their health and everyone involved in managing it, however, due to a lack of adequate tools and access, some patients end up slipping through the cracks. Integrating beacons with home health monitoring solutions, significantly increases the likelihood of continued engagement by the patient due to the personalized content and the right notifications and reminders, just at the right time.
About iUGO Health
iUGO Health is a home care platform that connects institutions, home care agencies, families and caregivers in one place, with the patient as the focal point. The platform permits configuration with beacons, smart devices, and other connected objects, turning any room in the house into a smart room that helps the patient adhere to their care programs. Patients also use iUGO Health to monitor their conditions at home, communicate with the care team and family, and create self progress reports. Estimote beacons and stickers enable patients to receive contextual and proximity based reminders right to their phones, tablets, and watches.
iUGO Health uses beacons to create contextual reminders by tagging equipment to work with the patient's’ life rather than take them out of it. Placing a beacon on the weigh scale allows for the patient to get a reminder to weigh themselves when next to the beacon rather than when they are away from the scale in the living room. The beacons can be used to find equipment that has been misplaced through the way finding capability. The beacons can set off an alarm when sensing the patient is leaving the house but forgetting their cane. The opportunities to work with a person’s life rather than against it will lead to better health outcomes and better satisfaction with the system.
Giancarlo De Lio, Chief Visionary Officer at iUGO Health
