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Chronic disease is a big issue that people have been facing for decades. A disease that usually takes months or longer in treatment 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 condition
- 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 to 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, efficient and outcome-driven tech solutions.
What is chronic care management?
Chronic care management is the care approach to help patients with their various chronic illness conditions such as cancer, diabetes, stroke, and list goes on and on.
The common chronic care management plan includes,
- Patients regular check-ups
- Measuring symptoms of a chronic disease
- Ideal medication care plan
- Provide education to the patients in maintaining a sufficient well-being
- Suitable diet plan to sustain chronic disease
- Helps in avoiding unnecessary food habits
- Support in maintaining a pleasing mental health condition
- Daily exercise plan
Why is chronic care management important?
Chronic care poorly impacts the lives of the 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 the patients to maintain their chronic conditions without any hassle.
Moreover, it supports them to live a better life while battling chronic conditions without any complexness.
In fact, many studies show that chronic care management helps patients in several forms such as,
- Eliminates the poor mental health conditions
- Helps to become a more socialized same as before 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 the patients about the 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
- 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 body sign of the patients
In simple terms, the current chronic disease management approach is time-consuming, costlier and inconvenient for the patients.
So, it is important to fill those crucial gaps in order to help the patients in 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 the technology in chronic care management is to,
- Reduce the medical costs for the patients
- Eliminates the travelling 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 to provide more effective and outcome-driven care solutions with ease.
For instance,
- Supports in a clinical assessment
- Prevent humane 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 revolutionary 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 a new norm in chronic care management.
This robust technology helps greatly both patients and their caregivers.
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 the 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 the 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, this way, technology in chronic care management is filling all the gaps between care solutions to 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 other robust health tech solutions are new tools in decoding various care needs of the patients.
So, this is a big opportunity for healthcare startups and organizations to level up their care efforts along with reducing the cost.
