Remote patient care amid the Covid-19 crisis minimized the risk of viral infections and helped physicians provide safe and efficient service, a local study said.
The research team of Professor Kim Kyung-hwan at the Hospital Information Office of Seoul National University Hospital (SNUH) released the study on the IT-based management of clinically healthy Covid-19 patients at a living and treatment support center in Mungyeong, North Gyeongsang Province, on Tuesday.
The researchers checked patients’ electrocardiograms, blood pressure, oxygen saturation, heart rate, and respiratory rate. Then, they transmitted the data to the SNUH’s hospital information system in Seoul.
The physicians at the SNUH could quickly and accurately monitor the status of patients in Mungyeong through a mobile application.
Within the hospital information system, the researchers also built a dashboard to allow medical staff to identify patients' status simultaneously. Patients used a mobile app to answer medical questionnaires, which reduced healthcare workers' workload and maximized communication with the patients.
SNUH introduced a cloud-based platform to share medical images between medical institutions quickly and accurately. When an asymptomatic patient’s condition worsened and had to be transferred to a local hospital, the SNUH immediately shared the medical data for timely treatment.
The IT-based information system opened a possibility of ideal telemedicine for proper treatment, early diagnosis, isolation, and treatment, the research team said.
Using IT in healthcare services also helped physicians respond to the infectious disease effectively, it added.
“Covid-19 is shifting the paradigm of healthcare. To minimize the transmission of the infectious disease and provide patient care safely, hospitals need to build an operating system that uses IT aggressively,” said Bae Ye-seul, a professor at the Hospital Information Office of the SNUH.
Professor Kim emphasized the IT-based infectious disease management system, introduced by the SNUH at the living and treatment support center, provided a good lesson that the combination of healthcare and advanced industrial technology can generate a strong synergy effect in the global infectious disease crisis.
The study has been published in the latest issue of the Journal of Medical Internet Research.