New DiMe Toolkit Helps Scale Wearables, RPM Sensors

The news: The Digital Medical Society (DiMe) released four toolkits that help healthcare and life science organizations scale wearables and remote patient monitoring (RPM) devices, per MobiHealthNews.

Here’s how it works: The toolkits include a blueprint for healthcare organizations to construct digital tools, a database of standards for different regions, resources for capacity and staffing planning, and an implementation toolkit that comes with a quick-start guide and priorities calculator.

Companies such as Amazon Web Services, Moffitt Cancer Center, and Oracle use the society’s Sensor Data Integrations project to generate data into platforms for clinical research. The project helps healthcare organizations integrate sensor data and algorithms to help medical professionals manage research data and aid clinical care.

Sensor data from connected devices track patients’ blood pressure, heart rate, respiratory function, and sleeping patterns. Devices range from wearables, smart speakers, and ingestible capsules to clinical RPM devices like glucometers, blood pressure cuffs, and pulse oximeters.

The problem: Data integration challenges are holding back healthcare organizations from aggregating key data from connected medical devices to access a single view of data.

• Physicians also require a logical clinical workflow for viewing sensor data.
• Failing to scale use of RPM devices can restrict access to data flow, per MobiHealthNews.

Zooming out: Collecting data from RPM devices can help healthcare organizations reduce costs amid the value-based care models.

As RPM adoption climbs in the US, physicians can also gain vital data on chronic conditions.

• Connected devices reduce medical interventions by monitoring patients regularly before a crisis occurs.
• The number of US RPM users will grow from 15.1% in 2021 to 26.2% in 2025. That’s an increase from 39.3 million to 70.6 million, respectively, according to our 2021 US Remote Patient Monitoring Forecast.
• The number of people using RPM technology at least once a month increased by 34.4% during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, according to our forecast.
• And nearly 46% of US adults would try a voice assistant to manage a chronic condition.

Large hospitals are clearly ahead when it comes to ramping up RPM adoption.

• In fact, 60% of large hospitals have an RPM program in place with plans to expand compared with 8.5% of midsize clinics and 6% of small clinics, according to a recent KLAS report.