Clare Island showcases virtual health project
CLARE Island has welcomed leaders from across healthcare, industry and academia to witness its state of the art digital health project, which uses technology to improve patient care.
The Home Health project is an innovative €1 million collaboration between CISCO and CURAM (Science Foundation Ireland Research Centre for Medical Devices) at the University of Galway, in partnership with Saolta, HSE. The project team also includes the Western Development Commission, Mayo County Council, a HSE innovation team and the Department of Rural and Community Development.
It represents a new way of delivering healthcare and, to date, 80% of adult islanders have signed up.
The project is led by Prof. Derek O’Keeffe, a consultant physician at University Hospital Galway and professor of medical device technology at University of Galway.
“One of the major challenges for patients in the west of Ireland and beyond is the long distances people have to travel to access care, then try to park and wait to be seen by their medical team, for 10 minutes. That’s a wasteful process no matter what the metric - time, money, environment - so new ways of delivering healthcare are necessary,” says Prof. O’Keeffe.
Clare Island's population ages range from under one to 91 years old, and encompasses a spectrum of health needs to match this broad demographic.
The Home Health team are seeking to find new ways of delivering healthcare, from preventative medicine, to the management of chronic disease and even emergency responses, in the hopes that these new methodologies might be scaled up and rolled out to other rural populations.
The project started last September and has several work streams underway, including the use of state of the art dual screen technology to run virtual clinics, for example for hypertension or diabetes. This allows a clinician to access the patient’s historical data - collected in their own home by the patient themselves - and to review this with the patient and make recommendations, without the patient ever having to leave the island.
In addition the project has developed an artificial intelligence algorithm called Dynamic Appointmentsto RAG (Red Amber Green) rate the RPM physiological data streams (e.g., blood pressure or blood sugar) to actively triage patients into appropriate outpatient clinics slots depending on clinical need rather than the traditional fixed time intervals.
The Home Health team demonstrated a range of healthcare delivery applications with drones at the demonstration day, including an emergency EpiPen response.
A technological highlight was the team's 'digital dog' named MADRA (Medical Autonomous Droid Remote Assistant), a quadraped robot which similar to a St. Bernard can respond to emergency situations, bringing first aid to injured patients in remote locations.
The island's GP, Dr. Noreen Curtis, who travels to the island by boat once a week, sees the digital health technology as complementary not competitive to her clinical practice.
She said: “I am very excited with the Home Health project and anticipate that improving virtual care will augment the current services and improve overall care for the patients here.”
As well as the traditional healthcare focus on helping people with established illness, the project has a work stream on health promotion to prevent illness, which includes personalised dietary and exercise interventions, in the hopes of keeping people healthier and able to remain in their island homes for longer.