Respiratory patients to receive specialist care at home as NHS Highland pilots virtual ward provided by Lenus Health
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An innovative service allowing respiratory patients to receive specialist care in their own homes has been launched by NHS Highland.
The respiratory virtual ward uses technology developed in Scotland to monitor patients remotely and could also support patients to be discharged from hospital back into their communities.
It is provided by Lenus Health.
Michelle Duffy, NHS Highland’s advanced practice respiratory nurse, described it as an "exciting development" for respiratory care in NHS Highland.
"We welcomed our first patients onto the programme this week, and we hope to have up to 100 patients benefiting from this remote monitoring technology at home," she said.
"People living with respiratory conditions feel more comfortable in their own home with family and friends nearby and will often want to avoid unnecessary hospital stays where possible.
"This technology helps them to do that.
"By being more connected to their health care team, specialist help can be provided at the time that suits them best and when it is most needed.
"We are actively taking steps to make their respiratory care at home more responsive.
"I am a firm believer in the positive role technology has in improving people’s understanding of how best to manage their condition and their health care professional's expertise in how best to support them with that."
Lenus Health’s specialised technology will support the respiratory virtual ward and give integrated care teams access to regularly updated patient and hospital system data within a single dashboard.
"The newly-launched virtual ward service will build a more robust and regular view of a patient’s wellbeing between appointments, so that we can be more responsive and can work with patients to see what is important to them in keeping them well at home and support them in this." Ms Duffy said.
"Any physical activity, however gentle, is well known to be one of the best things that people can do to keep and stay well, and this technology encourages this by enabling people to monitor their daily activity.
"This new service will give patients an important role to play in their health and will allow clinicians to closely monitor and act on the data provided.”
The innovative service builds on work developed at NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde under the Dynamic Scot project which supports around 600 patients with connected medical devices and wearable technologies enabling care teams to monitor health data, communicate digitally and initiate early interventions, which avoid hospital admissions.
