Can Mobile Health Technology Lower the Cost Burden on Our Healthcare Delivery System?

Mobile health technology connects patients to their caregivers remotely through communication over consumer IT devices. Smart phones, cell phones, computers, laptops, and wireless medical devices built for patients to use in their home, transmit updates to blood pressure, blood sugar, insulin, diet, exercise, pulse, weight, and oxygen levels from the patient's home to the care team's office. The care team monitors the patient's health in real-time. This opens up the possibility not only for better patient therapy compliance, but also for a nurse or doctor to intervene if one or more of a patient's readings fall outside of the normal value boundaries.

In healthcare, early intervention almost always translates into a lower cost of care. Take heart failure 30-day readmission rates for example. Heart failure is a complicated condition in a delicate patient. Many patients are discharged from the hospital with heart failure after a brief "recovery" from an acute episode. Unfortunately, many of those patients end up hospitalized again less than 30-days later. Accepted quality benchmarks deem this care inadequate, and therefore reimbursement rates are much lower for this readmission incident. The cost of care, therefore, must be paid for by the hospital (or the Accountable Care Organization). Doctors that can effectively implement a connected health program for their patients suffering from heart failure therefore can deliver better, time-sensitive care, further "upstream" in the healthcare delivery system, avoiding the human and financial burden of acute episodes more often.