Welsh care homes to deploy remote patient monitoring platform

Two care homes in Wales are to deploy a remote patient monitoring platform to help improve the wellbeing of residents and reduce the risk of hospital admission.

Hengoed Park and Hengoed Court, which are part of Swansea Bay University Health Board will be deploying Spirit Health’s CliniTouch Vie platform.

Funded by the Welsh Government through the Digital Solutions Fund, the new mental health pathway will be an additional tool for the mental health in-reach team and care homes to monitor patients. It will be used to support patients with dementia or other mental health issues, enabling regular monitoring and teams to receive results in real time.

Health care staff within the homes will complete the bespoke, clinically-led mental health questions, alongside taking the patient’s vital sign measurements daily, weekly or monthly. CliniTouch Vie will automatically analyse the data and generate a risk-scored list of prioritised actions.

Fiona Williams, from the mental health in-reach team, said: “We as a team are excited to be involved in this pilot project. We hope it will help to support the mental health in-reach team in ensuring the residents that are referred to us receive regular reviews and therefore, enabling us to deliver a more efficient and productive service.”

The technology will support health care teams in Wales to triage their patients and enable earlier intervention when necessary. Clinical information is available quickly to the mental health in-reach team so that patients can be assessed promptly. The live clinical data dashboard also helps identify those individuals most at risk. Combined this helps to keep residents in their care home setting, rather than requiring hospital admittance.

Dr Noel O’Kelly, clinical director at Spirit Health, said: “At Spirit Health, we are excited to partner with the Welsh Government to expand our technology pathways into a new area, with a clinical mental health pathway to assist care homes. We’re proud to play our part and introduce our digital solution, CliniTouch Vie, to help patients with mental health issues and provide them with the support and intervention they need, while reducing pressures on the health system.”

CliniTouch Vie’s digitised pathways include monitoring and management for a range of long-term conditions including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and heart failure as well as support for pulmonary rehabilitation programmes.

Outside of Wales, the platform has been implemented widely including at North West Anglia NHS Foundation Trust and Leicestershire Partnership NHS Trust to support virtual Covid-19 wards.