Remote technology helps Mayo Clinic monitor COVID-19 patients at home
ROCHESTER, Minn. (FOX 9) - Remote technology is allowing Mayo Clinic doctors to monitor and provide support to COVID-19 patients who are recovering at home.
“I think that we certainly believe that this will be future of health care,” said Dr. Tufia Haddad, the Mayo Clinic’s director of connected care medicine.
For the past four years, Mayo has used remote technology to monitor patients at home who have chronic conditions such as heart failure, COPD and diabetes. They quickly added COVID-19 patients in March. Since then, Mayo Clinic has treated and monitored 6,200 COVID-19 patients using remote technology in their own homes.
“We do provide patients with a cellular-enabled tablet as well as Bluetooth-enabled devices,” said Dr. Haddad. “And that would include a scale, a blood pressure cuff that also allows us to get heart rate information.”
The patient at home uses an app to record and uplink the information back to Mayo, which is then tracked by a team of nurses and specialty care doctors.
“We felt very strongly having a team of experts very much in tune with what was emerging: the symptoms to be monitoring, best practices for treatment, best practices for when to intervene,” said Dr. Haddad.
Mayo currently has about 550 COVID-19 patients they are monitoring from their homes. The average length of time is about 21 days. One of those patients was Deepi Goyal, who also happens to be a Mayo emergency room doctor.
“It really helped us get through the illness because we knew that if we were to worsen, there would be direction and coordination of care and if it need to be escalated,” said Dr. Goyal.
It’s like having a doctor in the house, but the doctor and nurses are just a tablet link away.
“This is how healthcare is transforming, is that we are able with technology, but importantly still with that human touch having nurses and physician oversight,” said Dr. Haddad.