Redesigning the network of fundamental territorial health services to limit contagion and minimize attendance to hospitals
(by Andrea Bisciglia, cardiologist and head of the AIDR Digital Health Observatory) The days we are living, in full epidemic from Covid 19, make it necessary to assist the patient remotely, monitoring, evaluating and intervening, both to set up and / or modify therapy that advise him in adopting any behaviors aimed at improving lifestyle.
In this situation, telemedicine and digital health services are the tools that can give an important answer.
What this epidemic teaches us is that it is of fundamental importance to reorganize territorial health, to reduce the flow of people to hospitals, so as to contain the contagion. The patient-doctor link is the first step in making the management of personal care more efficient and effective.
It is also necessary to redesign the network of territorial services, introducing teleassistance and telemedicine tools.
The use of technologies in medicine, considering the increase in chronic diseases such as, according to data from the World Health Organization, cardiovascular diseases (responsible for 17,5 million deaths per year), cancer (7,6 million ), chronic respiratory diseases (4.1 million) and diabetes (1,1 million), is increasingly necessary.
Telemedicine can activate an integrated hospital-territory-home network, in which the various professional figures such as general practitioners, free-choice pediatricians, nurses and other specialists should interact. Remote monitoring would allow continuous and real-time patient checks, avoiding displacements and lightening the workload of healthcare professionals.
Digital thermometers, blood pressure monitors, blood glucose monitoring systems, blood oxygen meters and heart rate monitoring systems are devices already in use that can be used at home and, in turn, remotely controlled via the network.
Today, in addition, with the use of big data and deep learning techniques we move from a medicine passed on to evidence to a predictive and preventive medicine even before symptoms appear, aimed at bringing a significant advantage to all stakeholders interested in individual care and assistance path, as well as a strengthening of the territory, a decentralization of the turnout towards hospitals and in particular the emergency room, with a reduction in the costs of public spending and the containment of any contagion outbreaks.