Health systems are getting more to plan for new remote patient monitoring (RPM) systems and intensive care and home hospitalization.
The U. S. Food and Drug AdministrationThe U. S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has announced the launch of the Home as a Health Care Hub, a resource designed for fitness leaders to understand how to design systems that deliver home care. As a component of this program, FDA Health’s Center for Devices and Radiology (CDRH) is hiring an architectural firm to explore how fitness care and equity can be included in the design of homes.
“While lately many care facilities are attempting to use the home as a virtual clinical site, very few have thought about the structural and critical elements of the home that will be needed to absorb this movement of care,” Jeff Shuren, MD, JD, Director of HRDC, and Michelle Tarver, MD, PhD, Associate Director of Transformation at HRDC, they said in a press release. In addition, devices that tend to be used in the home tend to be designed to work in isolation rather than as a component of an integrated, holistic environment. As a result, patients would arguably prefer to use multiple disparate medical devices—some never have a home environment—rather than interact with customizable, consumer-designed, medical-grade technologies that are seamlessly compatible. in a person’s lifestyle.
The program builds on an intriguing trend in fitness care, in which fitness systems and hospitals are looking to move more from the hospital, clinic and doctor’s workplace to the patient’s home. This includes RPM systems that allow care groups to monitor patients at home. , either through patient knowledge gathering at decided times or with continuous monitoring, as well as acute care and home hospitalization systems that combine RPM, virtual care, and in-person care.
This transition is very easy. As the customer generation sector reports huge growth in smart and wearable devices that come with uses in fitness care, clinicians are wary of the reliability of the information coming from those devices and know how to use them. Also, while home offers a new environment. For the delivery of physical care, clinicians need to better understand the demanding situations and benefits of providing physical care within this setting.
“We have an untapped resource at home,” Hon Pak, vice president and head of virtual fitness equipment at Samsung Electronics and a former Kaiser Permanente executive, said at a CES 2024 panel on the topic last January in Las Vegas. “Basically, we have to replace the model” of care delivery.
The new program will also focus on another key strategy for fitness care innovation: addressing fitness inequalities or challenging situations such as access to fitness care and treatments caused by social fitness drivers.
“This partnership includes collaboration with patient groups, physical care providers, and the medical device industry to make the home a physical care center,” Shuren and Tarver said in the news release. “This prototype will serve as a think tank, just to connect you with the populations most impacted by fitness inequity, but also to allow medical device developers, policymakers, and providers to begin to find internal answers that advance fitness equity. “
“Existing models that tested home care delivery revealed maximum patient satisfaction, compliance, and potential cost savings from fitness systems,” they added. “Beginning with housing in rural spaces and low-income communities, the planned prototype will be deliberately designed with the purpose of promoting fitness equity. “
[Read more: Patient Joy Is Hospital Success at Home. ]
The two executives said the program is part of an overhaul of physical care to focus on the patient, with care plans that meet the patient’s wishes and not one that forces the patient to adapt to new roles or routines. As such, physical care providers want to perceive the environment around the patient.
“The Home as a Health Care Hub prototype is the beginning of the conversation: it’s helping device developers adopt new design approaches, giving providers opportunities to educate patients and expand care options, sparking discussions about value-based care paradigms, and opening up opportunities to bring clinical trials and other evidence-generating processes to underrepresented communities through the outbreak,” Said.
Eric Wicklund is Associate Director of Content and Editor-in-Chief of Innovation, Technology and Pharmacy at HealthLeaders.
As fitness systems increasingly move from hospitals, clinics, and doctors’ offices to the home, providers want to better perceive the patient’s home environment.
This involves understanding the benefits and demanding conditions of the family environment, devices and platforms that can capture reliable and relevant information, and addressing health inequalities.
The new FDA Home as a Health Care Center aims to provide a resource to expand greater home care programs, adding RPM and critical care and hospital home services.
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