Telehealth, sometimes referred to as telemedicine, can be thought of as the enablement of healthcare via any remote capability. It could be a remote mental health engagement between patients and psychologists, a cardiac patient having a remote follow-up with their cardiologist, or clinical trial participants using their smartphone via a video link to communicate to the clinical study coordinator. Developing new generations of telehealth products with increased/ improved capabilities will require expertise with emerging communications technologies.
Healthcare companies are increasingly adopting systems that enable them to care for patients remotely. Smart devices, wearables, or off-the-shelf (OTS) medical devices — all of which will become more widely available — enable remote monitoring.
These OTS devices gather data from a sensor worn by the patient and transmitted via BLE connection to a mobile phone application or proprietary data hub.
Regardless of how the data is gathered, these remote monitors will require a patient engagement app through which patients can enter and track data, maintain a “data diary,” and connect securely to the cloud for data storage, integration and reporting.
Telehealth via monitoring devices will enable many different use cases. Given the private nature of the data, it will be important that companies developing telehealth apps have the expertise to provide a consistent set of features associated with patient identification, patient sessions, patient data storage/retrieval, and secure data communications between the various elements of the systems (sensors, mobile phones, and cloud applications).