This document discusses how a digital healthcare service for remote patient monitoring can help reduce strain on primary care resources by allowing patients to self-monitor conditions like blood pressure from home and send results digitally to their doctors. It argues that monitoring blood pressure, blood sugar levels, and other routine health data remotely using online systems could save thousands of GP appointments annually and help address issues like long wait times and doctor shortages faced by practices in the UK healthcare system.

1. Hypertension Self Monitoring
This paper argues that a digital healthcare service for monitoring chronic Blood
Pressure patients can reduce the resources needed by primary care.
Reducing Surgery Queues and Waiting Times
It’s hard to believe that since 1989, almost 40% of Banks on Britain’s high streets have closed,
this seems hard to understand, but for the most part it is simply the outcome of our migration
towards phone and online services over the past five or more years.
Changing consumer behaviour has forced the banking, retail and travel industries to change the
way they deliver customer services, nowadays we can manage our money and purchases from
increasingly complex web sites services instead of using physical services in stores.
Up to now, healthcare has not been able to deliver these same benefits, only a few percent of
people in the UK organise their healthcare online.
Using their local GP surgeries, the model for how people access their healthcare hasn’t changed
much at all in recent years. We remain fixated with a direct GP consultation and people seem
happy to wait in long queues at surgeries to see their doctor.
By delivering healthcare services digitally, we can make the NHS more sustainable.
The benefits for primary care are huge
Some forecasts predict that over 500 surgeries could close in 2015, as older GPs come up to
their retirement and younger GP's fail to fill their places. Of course the UK Government has
promised thousands of new GPs, however this will need lots of resources applied very quickly.
What is needed is a transformed model of delivering healthcare at scale that can be used by any
local GP surgery to make better use of the people the surgery already employs.
Remote monitoring systems are nothing new. Every time you look at the dashboard in your car
you are using a form of remote monitoring. Energy companies give away free monitoring units
to help their customers monitor their usage and save money.
Medical remote monitoring is quite different. A sensor mat under a mattress can monitor sleep
patterns, heart and breathing rates and transmit the data to the doctor online. Pacemakers have
systems that keep doctors appraised of the condition of the device. These systems are
appropriate for serious conditions and are usually costly to implement.
Diabetics routinely test their own blood sugar levels, but without a simple to use system, those
results are not easily available to the local medical practise.

2. Patient self monitoring in medical practice
After two years of development there is now available a low cost home monitoring system for
Patients to be able to take their own blood pressures and automatically send these results back
to their Doctor as a comprehensive report.
This is a patient self monitoring system which feeds back to their doctor the results of a series
routine blood pressure tests, very easily taken in their own home, in a relaxed environment,
with their own equipment over a period of seven days.
In 2014 an estimated 27 million patients will have to wait a week to see their GP, and a routine
blood pressure test uses up scarce surgery appointments.
Now a patient can take their own blood pressure and, using a simple but fully secure web-based
system, send their completed series of results to the surgery as a comprehensice report.
Studies suggest that by placing 4,000 patients on this new remote blood pressure monitoring
scheme could save up to 7,500 surgery appointments a year.
The system makes full use of automatic email reminders and mobile text alerts so that any
extreme or out of normal range result which is likely to cause concern is brought to the doctor’s
attention immediately, allowing the surgery staff to call in the patient for an abnormal review.
Hypertention Monitoring is only one condition that could benefit from this new service.
Diabetics blood sugar levels, routine urine tests, consumption of alcohol, any of these conditions
are suitable for self monitoring – it is all about re-assurance and cost reduction.
By implementing a digital system GP’s can rest assured that the patient is using the service (it
can alert the practise if a Patient fail to record their results on time) and the patient will be
reassured that their GP is looking at their data as soon as they complete their last entry.
Of course the data is only as accurate as the patient who collects it for themselves, where
needed direct input devices can be directly linked to the system, not always at a higher cost, the
overall cost needs to be taken into account, so that the service is suitable every patient, often
older patients will need fully automated BP measuring units which automatically report the
result per use.
Cost benfits are significant. Savings are derived from needing far fewer surgery appointments,
and the automated level checking alerts mean that the medical staff only need to review those
exceptions brought to light by the system - rather than having to check every patients individual
results, which are often 'normal' or within band for that patient.
No new investment in surgery equipment is required, but patients may need to purchase their
own blood pressure monitoring equipment unless this is provided for them, particularly when
the patient is not able to deal directly with the system and therefore requires a fully automated

3. version of the BP measuring unit.
Access to the cloud web service can be provided at low cost. There are no postage costs, and
not needing to visit the surgery can be a significant benefit for some patients who are infirm,
live in remote locations or lead a busy work-a-day lifestyle. Reassuring all round.
To replace the surgery interview, a life style questionaire can be used to complete the full
patient picture, this provides for a safety net which combined with the BP pressure figures gives
the Doctor confidence in the recorded results.
A Patient Portal Monitoring Service
The monitoring of less serious but ongoing conditions such as high blood pressure and blood
sugar is using too many appointments at surgeries where doctors are already overstretched.
Current remote monitoring equipment is too expensive for such conditions, but there is now
available a newly developed system where patients take their own readings which can then be
reported directly to the surgery via secure web-based software utilising the latest state of the
art techniques.
The system can alert the surgery if data is not collected when expected or that which is entered
is a cause for concern. Its advantages are ease of use and cost - fewer appointments will be
needed and no new monitoring equipment is required when the patient is able to enter their
own results.
Reporting via the net is low cost, needing no postage or patient transport implications. The
revenue web service costs to surgeries are marginal and both doctor and patient will be
reassured that their condition is being monitored accurately and at a time to suit them both.
For more information contact sales@OnevisionHealth.co.uk or info@applied-it-savings.com