In early 2020, the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) spread worldwide with a high transmission rate. The exponential growth rate of infected patients resulted in immense pressure on already scarce healthcare resources in the form of beds and medical personnel.
When this project commenced, there was an immediate requirement for solutions that could help monitor the development of the COVID-19 pandemic as well as help distribute healthcare resources in an effective manner to avoid breakdown of the healthcare systems.
The COVID-19 Telemedicine software is a pandemic preparedness solution that can be utilised not only for COVID-19 but also for future pandemics. It is a telehealth solution that enables automatic triage and remote monitoring of non-critical patients in their homes, thus keeping them out of hospitals, lessening the pressure on personnel and wards.
The project result was originally expected to be a fully rolled-out infectious disease management tool for governments all over Europe, that could help reduce casualties from COVID-19. However, as COVID-19 vaccines for the general public and national lockdowns were introduced, the threat to the national healthcare systems became less critical.
Then Long COVID, or COVID-19 lingering symptoms emerged, which caused an influx of patients to e.g. pulmonary wards and dedicated Long COVID clinics, adding additional strain to fatigued healthcare personnel and nearly depleted resources, after two years’ pandemic. The COVID-19 Telemedicine project was therefore expanded to also include monitoring of Long COVID patients and contribution of anonymised data to research.
During engagement with healthcare systems on how to best cater to Long COVID patients and the healthcare personnel tending to their health, a new untapped market demand emerged to offer remote patient monitoring of subacute patients. A Danish regional healthcare authority, coined the term eHospital for this solution, and it has since been in pilot phase with Levvel Health technology. The regional eHospital is, to our knowledge, the first of its kind worldwide.
The eHospital is dedicated to subacute patients who don’t require specialised treatment in a traditional hospital but who are too sick to stay in their homes even with remote monitoring. An example of such a patient could be an elderly woman with COPD who is admitted to the eHospital because of a urinary tract infection. She is sick, she needs professional healthcare and monitoring, but she does not need to be admitted to a traditional hospital. Instead, such patients can be admitted to municipal beds close to their homes and be cared for by nurses and healthcare assistants.
The primary benefits of the solution are the same whether it is utilised for caring for COVID-patients, subacute patients or chronically ill patients: Healthcare costs are considerably lowered and the shortage of healthcare professionals is effectively addressed.
In summary, the COVID-19 Telemedicine project started out as a digital solution addressing an urgent need caused by a single disease. After the project periode, the result is a complex, yet simple to use, remote patient monitoring solution that is disease and device agnostic, and has the ability to adapt to fluctuations in diseases, not least can it be utilised as the backbone of eHospital facilities, making healthcare cheaper, truly cross-sectional, and patient-centred.
