patientMpower, together with clinicians based at Beaumont Hospital, Dublin and the Mater Hospital, Dublin, have been announced as recipients of major new funding under Ireland’s Sláintecare Integration Fund. This fund seeks to support projects which can empower self-care and support the shift of care from the hospital to the community, particularly in chronic disease management. patientMpower have been awarded the funding to support the development of its “smart triage” application for kidney and lung disease patients. Using patient remote-monitoring, supported by specialist transplantation teams, it is hoped that this application will reduce the need for post-transplantation out-patient appointments by two-thirds, freeing up hospital resources, reducing waiting lists and improving patient’s quality of life.
Eamonn Costello, CEO of patientMpower said “patientMpower develops solutions to empower better outcomes for patients, to enable them to manage their conditions at home, supported by their care team. Our solution for kidney and lung transplant is a major innovation, with the potential to really change how post-transplant healthcare services are delivered. This work is in line with the aims of Ireland’s cross party Sláintecare programme, which seeks to use technology and connected health solutions to shift care from acute to community settings. We are delighted to be recipients of the Sláintecare Integration Fund which will support the implementation of our application in the Irish healthcare system”. The funding will now be used to run a pilot deployment on the use of patientMpower in kidney and lung transplant patients, being led by clinicians based at Beaumont & Mater Hospitals in Dublin.
Kidney and lung transplant survival requires the continuous monitoring of patient-reported symptoms and laboratory data. Routine hospital attendance by transplant patients requires significant healthcare utilisation costs. Post-transplant, patients are reviewed on a regular basis. This traditional approach results in significant patient burden and inefficient use of healthcare resources. There is an unmet need for high quality, remote, community-based monitoring of kidney and lung transplant patients.
patientMpower Ltd. have developed a self-management mobile app for kidney and lung transplant recipients. The app can record both subjective data (patient-reported symptoms) and objective data from connected devices (blood pressure, lung function, weight, etc.). Patients can monitor trends in their data through the app, while the transplant centre can review the data in real time and act on important signals. The patientMpower platform is in routine use in the lung transplant programme at NYU Langone Hospital, New York, who have successfully reduced post-transplant outpatient visits by around 66%. In this innovative transplant centre, patients requiring urgent intervention can be identified earlier than the current standard of care, with capacity made available by deferring visits for stable patients.
Face-to-face outpatient reviews can thus be triaged in a ‘smart’ manner, reducing the frequency of outpatient visits to the hospital. With the help of the Sláintecare Integration Fund, stable kidney and lung transplant patients will undergo remote monitoring from home. This will free up outpatient consultant resources to help reduce waiting lists for other Kidney & Lung disease patients.
