Halton and St Helens PCT Deploys Telehealth Solutions for Patients with Long-Term Conditions

Halton and St Helens Community Health Services, in partnership with Sefton Careline, have launched a new telehealth monitoring project. Telehealth systems from Tunstall Healthcare are set up in patients’ homes, enabling their health to be monitored remotely by nursing staff.

The initial phase of the project will run for a twelve-month period, involving a small number of community matrons and their patients, to allow monitoring and evaluation. Once implemented successfully, it will be rolled out across Halton and St Helens, involving community matrons plus service leads from heart failure, stroke and COPD community teams.

Tunstall telehealth solutions have been offered to patients from three chronic disease areas – heart failure, COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) and stroke. The units measure the individual’s health, in the comfort of their own home. Patients are given training to use the monitor and then take their own blood pressure, oxygen levels, weight and temperature, as well as answering a series of health related questions, on a daily basis.

The information is automatically transferred in real time, via the monitor, to Sefton Careline’s monitoring centre, where the information is checked and any problems can be raised with the appropriate community matron.

In one example a 67-year-old heart failure patient who prior to starting telehealth had four hospital admissions in the last 12 months, has to date had none in the last four months and has increased his quality of life. He said "I have felt at ease being able to monitor my health daily, which would have been impossible under normal circumstances. Without the telehealth system I would have been admitted to hospital again."

Mike Ore, head of service delivery, community health services, who introduced the telehealth programme said: "By deploying the system for community-based care we are empowering patients, reducing anxiety, promoting independence and so improving overall quality of life. Telehealth also educates patients to be aware of their symptoms, to proactively manage them, reducing part of the burden on healthcare providers. This can be seen as an excellent example of innovative partnership work being undertaken by Community Health Services (CHS) and Sefton Careline.

This service will support the ability to provide the most appropriate care, as close to home as possible and this project really does build on these principles. I’m sure that in the future, many patients throughout Halton and St Helens will benefit from telehealth."

www.tunstallhealth.com