Page 18 - HME Business, August/September 2019

Owning
the Loop
By David Kopf
Remote patient monitoring is the norm in some corners of HME, and providers have worked to create a ‘loop’ of data for their referral partners. The question is, will other developments in connected care break that loop wide open?
Big data. The Internet of things. Artificial intelligence. Machine learning. These tech terms get thrown around in all corners of
our lives these days, and that includes healthcare. With wearable health devices, to smartphones, to connected home products having grown commonplace,
it’s no surprise that home medical equipment is becoming part of that landscape.
In fact, it can safely be argued that HME helped chart some of that territory. For years now, we’ve seen PAP devices in the sleep therapy market report back near real-time information to cloud-based remote patient monitoring (RPM) systems. This provides a number of benefits: it improves patients’ care; it helps physicians and other stakeholders show to payers know therapy is happening; and it lets providers differentiate to their referral partners
as the expert product resource that can make this happen. Consider it a win for patients, refer- rals, payers, and HME providers.
But as big a trend as remote patient moni- toring is in the HME world, it’s only one compo- nent of a much larger evolution occurring across healthcare when it comes to connected health, patient monitoring and healthcare data.
Picture this: A child repeatedly coughs through the night. A device similar to an Amazon Echo
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