Health systems are ramping up their use of wearable technology and remote monitoring devices to track patients' health, both within the four walls of the hospital and in their homes.
BioIntelliSense has notched partnerships with two big hospitals to use its adhesive wearable devices for monitoring vital signs and health symptoms. The use of the company's remote care solutions will help address workforce shortages and create a more equitable, accessible and affordable patient care experience, according to the organizations.
BioIntelliSense’s FDA-cleared BioSticker and medical-grade BioButton both use an adhesive to stick onto a user’s upper chest, where the devices proceed to capture readings of dozens of vital signs and physiological symptoms for weeks at a time.
And, two years after launching its BioButton single-use remote monitoring device amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the company recently introduced a longer-lasting, rechargeable version of the wearable, Fierce MedTech reported. The new BioButton offers the same basic promise of BioIntelliSense’s other adhesive wearables: It continuously measures more than 20 medical data points including body temperature, heart and respiratory rate, activity levels and gait analysis. It also monitors infection-related symptoms like vomiting, sneezing and coughing.
Those data are then wirelessly transmitted via Bluetooth to the BioMobile app, where healthcare providers can examine changes over time in each patient’s vital signs and physical symptoms.
The company says its patient-friendly wearables capture and wirelessly transmit up to 1,440 sets of vital sign measurements per day at a fraction of the cost of traditional, manually collected vital sign measurements four to six times per day.
At Houston Methodist, clinical leaders say the collaboration with BioIntelliSense will enable more effective remote care and address the rising costs and burdens of the growing healthcare workforce shortage. The two organizations will jointly design and develop a state-of-the-art virtual care control center at the hospital to enable seamless, scalable, continuous monitoring of patients across in-hospital to home care settings, executives said.
"Data-driven remote patient monitoring that is simple, clinically accurate, and cost-effective, is the future of healthcare delivery,” said James Mault, M.D., founder and CEO of BioIntelliSense. “We are proud to work alongside our partners at Houston Methodist to pioneer a continuous care model that provides actionable data and clinical intelligence to enable our overburdened healthcare workforce take better care of patients in any care setting.”
Through the collaboration, the two organizations will develop advanced algorithms, care models and data analytics for monitoring and treating a range of complex conditions spanning heart and vascular, orthopedics, oncology, infectious diseases, transplants and others.
One of the nation’s leading health systems and academic medical centers, Houston Methodist consists of eight hospitals: Houston Methodist Hospital, its flagship academic hospital in the Texas Medical Center, six community hospitals and one long-term acute care hospital throughout the greater Houston metropolitan area.
At UC Davis Health, BioIntelliSense’s data-driven clinical intelligence platform will be integrated as part of the health system's virtual care strategy to advance remote care for patients.
“Remote care represents a safe and effective way for many people, especially in rural and low-income communities, to access necessary health care services in more convenient ways," said David Lubarsky, CEO of UC Davis Health, in a statement.
"As one of the nation’s leaders in telehealth, we’ve seen how real-time technology connects expertise with need, closing large time-lapse gaps in health care delivery. Now, with continuous and simultaneous Internet connectivity enabling even more remote care, we can have hospital-level monitoring of multiple vital signs wherever patients are in-hospital, traveling, or at home," Lubarksy said.
Patients will benefit from lower levels of human monitoring and shorter hospital stays, he noted. Providers will immediately be able to note any deviations from expected recovery or response to treatment and communicate with the patient, family caregivers and other providers as soon as the continuous monitoring predicts a potential or real negative turn in health.
With more real-time remote monitoring of patients, providers can intervene faster, leading to better health outcomes achieved in lower acuity settings that are more patient- and family-friendly, such as the patient’s home, Lubarksy said.
UC Davis Health also plans to use BioIntelliSense's technology for inpatient care, as the continuous multiparameter data and sophisticated algorithms enable better recognition of hemodynamic stability that can lead to earlier hospital discharge.
In the coming months, the health systems plans to work with the tech company to co-validate continuous care models and iteratively learn how best to deliver an exceptional patient and clinical experience while prioritizing patient safety and efficacy at scale.
Founded in 2018, BioIntelliSense has raked in $82 million in funding to date, according to Crunchbase, backed by United Arab Emirates-based Chimera Investments, Philips’ health tech-focused venture funding arm and 7wire Technology Partners.
BioIntelliSense's success in developing remote patient monitoring tools amid the pandemic caught the attention of Philips, which in July of 2020 tapped the company to integrate the FDA-cleared BioSticker into its existing remote patient monitoring portfolio.