Shifting advanced medical care from hospital to home

23rd January 2018

CES

Enaie Azambuja

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Whitepaper

Healthcare is evolving and even where clinical care is delivered is changing. Fifty years ago, patients stayed in the hospital for weeks after an appendectomy. Today they go home the same or the next day. Some patients nowadays stay due to common problems: for DVT prophylaxis after surgery, for physical therapy, for antibiotics and serial CBCs to monitor the progress of infection, and so on. But as technology evolves, some of these clinical tasks could be done at home.

Consider that we now have wearables that can monitor basic vital signs better than CNAs (nursing assistants) on the hospital floor. We also have a growing list of devices within the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT, you read it here first) such as continuous wearable ECGs, face-to-face communication devices, portable insulin pumps, and many other technologies that produce useful data, and all these devices could be integrated to provide care for patients at home on the same level, or even better, than in the hospital.

Medically Home Group, a technology-enabled services company out of Boston, Mass, was displaying its know-how at CES 2018, and we stopped by to check them out. According to Richard Rakowski, the company’s CEO, up to 25% of patients currently in the hospital could be cared for at home.

Medically Home’s technology, dubbed Cesia Continuum, integrates evidence-based pathways and various devices to make sure that patients receive the highest levels of care surrounded by their family at home, or as the company calls it, “micro-hospital unit in the home”.

According to Rakowski, at the time of CES 2018, the company had 23 patients being cared for at their homes, and 88 patients in clinical trials. The company has clinical collaborations with nonprofits Atrius Health and VNA Care to bring the Medically Home Program of Care to patients.