The proposed research seeks to demonstrate a new healthcare monitoring system that allows for improved and rapid interventions for elderly patients being treated at home. Healthcare costs have risen dramatically, leading to a search for effective strategies for controlling costs. Due to these cost-containment pressures, many homecare patients and informal caregivers now administer their own therapies, including IV drug infusions, oral medications, and respirator care with limited clinical supervision. The remote monitoring technology that was successfully developed and tested in Phase 1 has the potential to contribute to enhanced patient compliance with home-based therapies. thereby reducing the risk of complications and poor outcomes. Goals for Phase 2 include the fabrication and validation of a fully functional system to transmit data about patients' medication compliance and vital signs to clinicians. Another goal is to assess patients' and caregivers' responses to the remote monitoring system, in actual use, and to evaluate the impact of the system on patients' medication compliance and caregivers' burden. A sample of 140 frail older adults and their primary caregivers will be randomly assigned to either an intervention group (with the system) or a control group. Psychosocial and compliance outcomes will be examined over a 6-month period.
The proposed device will allow nearly any medical instrument to be remotely monitored and controlled. The market potential for these devices exceeds $100 million annually. The potential savings to the U.S. healthcare system exceed $1 billion in terms of improved outcome, compliance and rapid intervention.
