The Role of Technology in Chronic Care Management

Chronic disease is a big issue that people have been facing for decades. A disease that usually takes months or longer to treat may get worse over time.

As per the report, “6 in 10 Americans live with at least one chronic disease.”.

It’s not easy to overcome chronic diseases such as cancer, diabetes, stroke, and the list goes on and on.

What’s more important is that patients face a lot of consequences while suffering from chronic diseases.

For instance,

• Poor well-being
• Inadequate mental health conditions
• Need to travel for the regular check-ups.
• Impacts their financial condition
• And time-consuming consultation process

Thus, a result-driven solution is needed to help the patients overcome chronic conditions and reduce the overall medical cost in one go.

Sensing the opportunity, technology comes into the picture.

It has the potential to not only help the patients but also assist the healthcare professionals to enhance the care outcomes and quality of care experience.

So, this blog is the roadmap to understanding how technology is transforming chronic care management with its faster, more efficient, and outcome-driven tech solutions.

What is chronic care management?

Chronic care management is the care approach to helping patients with their various chronic illness conditions, such as cancer, diabetes, stroke, and the list goes on and on.

The common chronic care management plan includes:

• Patients receive regular check-ups.
• Measuring the symptoms of a chronic disease
• An ideal medication care plan
• Provide education to the patients on maintaining sufficient well-being.
• A suitable diet plan to sustain chronic disease
• Helps in avoiding unnecessary food habits.
• Support for maintaining a pleasing mental health condition
• Daily exercise plan

Why is chronic care management important?

Chronic care poorly impacts the lives of patients.

Many chronic conditions, such as asthma, diabetes, and cancer, require regular treatment and monitoring in order to avoid a life-threatening situation.

Chronic care management helps patients maintain their chronic conditions without any hassle.

Moreover, it supports them to live a better life while battling chronic conditions without any complexity.

In fact, many studies show that chronic care management helps patients in several ways, such as:

• Eliminates poor mental health conditions
• It helps to become more socialized, just as before with chronic conditions.
• Improves patient engagement in their care solutions
• Aware and teaches the patient about how to maintain their chronic care conditions without any initial support.

But chronic care management is not an easy task!

The ultimate goal of chronic disease management is to

• Lowers the progress of the chronic disease
• Reduce the medical costs.
• Awareness among the patients about self-management

However, due to the low-grade healthcare services, healthcare professionals are not able to focus on the quality of care experience of the patients along with the care outcomes of the various chronic conditions.

For instance,

• Patients need to travel by themselves for regular checkups and medication needs.
• An appointment with a healthcare professional is time-consuming.
• Patients have to wait in the appointment waiting area for their checkups.
• Medical experts are not able to collect the real-time vital signs of the patients.

In simple terms, the current chronic disease management approach is time-consuming, costly, and inconvenient for patients.

So, it is important to fill those crucial gaps in order to help patients with their chronic care conditions.

The role of technology in chronic care management

Technology has the enormous potential to fill all the gaps in chronic care management.

The ultimate goal of technology in chronic care management is to:

• Reduce the medical costs for the patients.
• Eliminates travel needs
• Helps healthcare professionals provide better care solutions.
• Enhance the care outcomes
• Improve the patients’ mental health and overall well-being.

So, let’s explore some examples of technology in chronic care management.

#1. Big data:

Data is everything in healthcare, whether it’s chronic care management or other healthcare solutions.

It helps medical professionals provide more effective and outcome-driven care solutions with ease.

For instance,

• Supports in a clinical assessment
• Prevent human error.
• Helps in creating a more effective care plan for the patients.

#2. Healthcare IoT:

This is one of the most useful and important use cases of technology in chronic care management.

Why? Because it measures, collects, and shares the patients’ vital body signs in order to support the care team in providing better chronic care solutions.

For instance,

Wearable devices like pulse meters frequently measure the heart rate of the patients and send that data directly into the app or EMR/EHR so that medical experts can examine the patients’ condition at any time, anywhere.

#3. Telemedicine app:

Telemedicine is a revolution in chronic care management.

It allows patients to connect with the chronic care specialist over a voice call, video call, or in-app messaging so that patients don’t need to travel for their clinical visits.

This way, it reduces medical costs and eliminates the need for live-in-person visits for patients suffering from chronic conditions.

#4. Remote patient monitoring:

Remote patient monitoring is becoming the norm in chronic care management.

This robust technology helps both patients and their caregivers greatly.

It enables the chronic care specialist to analyze the real-time conditions of the patients at any time from anywhere so that they can recommend to the patients if something is not going well with their chronic conditions.

For instance,

• Glucometer
• Blood pressure cuff
• Pulse oximeter
• Wearable devices, or IoT

These devices support medical experts in providing a better care experience, even from outside of the clinic or hospital.

#5. AI and ML:

AI and ML are opening a new door in chronic care management with their robust ability to enhance care outcomes at every stage of the chronic disease journey.

But how?

• Predicting the care outcome as per the symptoms
• Assists chronic care specialists to create a more effective care plan.
• Speeds up the clinical assessment process.
• Real-time alerting for the irregular symptom

So, in this way, technology in chronic care management is filling all the gaps between care solutions and quality care solutions while at the same time reducing costs.

Conclusion

Technology has seen massive adoption in the past few years in healthcare, especially in chronic care management.

Healthcare app development, software development, IoT integration, RPA solutions, AI and ML, and many more robust health tech solutions are new tools for decoding the various care needs of patients.

So, this is a big opportunity for healthcare startups and organizations to level up their care efforts while reducing costs.