New tool measures ROI for remote monitoring efforts

A new web-based tool unveiled this week allows providers to determine their return on investment for remote patient monitoring technologies. The tool--co-developed by the Partners HealthCare Center for Connected Health in Boston and the Oakland, Calif.-based Center for Technology and Aging--also helps providers to determine future ROI, which enables rollouts of remote monitoring tools to be more measured and strategic.

"The importance of accurate, compelling and relevant health services research cannot be overstated in an evolving care environment," Jeremy Rich, director of the Torrance, Calif., HealthCare Partners Institute for Applied Research and Education, said in a statement.

HealthCare Partners--a physician group practice that operates  in Florida, Nevada and New Mexico, as well as California--already used the tool to determine that a remote monitoring program it rolled out for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease had a positive ROI of 1.3 to 1 after one year, figures expected to balloon to 18.9 to 1 within five years.

Research published in January by analyst firm Berg Insight estimated that 2.8 million patients worldwide used home-based remote monitoring services from dedicated devices in 2012. It predicted that by 2017, that number will rise to 9.4 million connections.

A two-year pilot program conducted at Indianapolis-based St. Vincent Health found that remote video-conferencing between nurses and discharged patients helped to reduce readmissions to the provider by 75 percent. Chief Medical Informatics Officer Alan Snell shared those results during a FierceMobileHealthcare's executive breakfast panel discussion at last December's mHealth Summit in Washington, D.C.

To learn more:
- read the announcement (.pdf)