None listed
Conditions
Brief summary
The Hospital in the Home (HITH) Service is a new model of care in Townsville Hospital and Health Service (THHS) whereby acute patients are treated in their own home by experienced nursing staff. This model of care has been employed at various locations across Australia and indeed the rest of the world for the past 25 years and has been established as a safe model of care with respect to patient morbidity and mortality. The current service provision model involves patients being visited up to three times per day by nursing staff to perform observations and provide wound care, IV antibiotics and physical review. In many instances a patient would only be visited once per day if they are physiologically stable. In comparison, admitted inpatients receive observations on average four times per day. This has implications for the perception of the quality of care provided under the HITH model by both patients and referring clinicians. In the literature there are many examples of the use of Telemedicine and tablet based Telemonitoring devices in the management of chronic diseases such as Diabetes, Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease and Congestive Cardiac Failure. There is a paucity of evidence for the use of this technology in the acute sphere such as that seen in HITH with only one article published reviewing outcomes in 41 patients. The goal of this project is to implement and evaluate the use of a wireless TGA approved home monitoring device into the HITH Service at The Townsville Hospital.
Interventions
Patients will be required to measure their own observations using a tablet based device four times per day for the length of their admission to the Hospital in the Home Service. The observations recorded will be pulse rate, temperature, blood pressure and blood oxygen saturations. These will be recorded using devices connected to the tablet device via a Bluetooth (TM) connection.These observations will be automatically uploaded to a secure internet based server where they will be viewed by the
Patients will be required to measure their own observations using a tablet based device four times per day for the length of their admission to the Hospital in the Home Service. The observations recorded will be pulse rate, temperature, blood pressure and blood oxygen saturations. These will be recorded using devices connected to the tablet device via a Bluetooth (TM) connection.These observations will be automatically uploaded to a secure internet based server where they will be viewed by the Clinical Nurse or Senior Medical Officer affiliated with the HITH Service.
Sponsors
Dr Michael Young
Study design
Allocation
Randomised controlled trial
Intervention model
Parallel
Primary purpose
Treatment
Masking
Open (masking not used)
Eligibility
Sex/Gender
All
Age
18 Years to No maximum
Healthy volunteers
No
Inclusion criteria
Acute ambulatory patients admitted to a Hospital in the Home Service which has the following inclusion criteria for all patients - * Patient consents to the program * Lives within 50km radius of TTH * Adequate social support * Refrigerator on site * Safe environment (both for patient and visiting staff) assessed using a documented checklist * Telephone available
Exclusion criteria
Sepsis Confusion/Delirium Known IV drug user Unable to obtain IV access Pain not managed with oral analgesia Inability to tolerate oral intake Poorly managed co-morbidities Immunocompromised
Outcome results
None listed