I get really really excited when I read articles like this. For the elderly, so many causes of hospitalization are completely preventable. And it is hospitalizations which wipe out patients' savings.
So if we can prevent hospitalizations for the elderly, that is a huge win. Bonus points for using everything we know about wireless sensor networks to monitor patients' conditions and predict when something catastrophic is about to happen, rather than relying on a person to physically examine each patient.
I have seen one patient who developed sepsis while in a nursing home. She had an expressive aphasia, so she wasn't able to tell us that she was feeling ill. I wonder if we would have been able to test for it earlier with better monitoring and mining.
I realize it sounds obvious to say "going to the hospital is bad" but they have a bigger impact than you'd think. Upon return to a nursing home from a hospital, patients will have been moved to a different room. Or moved from a single-occupancy to double-occupancy room. Which has a cascade of implications in terms of their care. Often this kind of thing is a function of how much the patient can afford, which is significantly decreased after a hospitalization. So the prospect of having better care (via technology, since nursing homes are chronically understaffed) to prevent preventable hospitalizations is so so cool.
So if we can prevent hospitalizations for the elderly, that is a huge win. Bonus points for using everything we know about wireless sensor networks to monitor patients' conditions and predict when something catastrophic is about to happen, rather than relying on a person to physically examine each patient.
I have seen one patient who developed sepsis while in a nursing home. She had an expressive aphasia, so she wasn't able to tell us that she was feeling ill. I wonder if we would have been able to test for it earlier with better monitoring and mining.
I realize it sounds obvious to say "going to the hospital is bad" but they have a bigger impact than you'd think. Upon return to a nursing home from a hospital, patients will have been moved to a different room. Or moved from a single-occupancy to double-occupancy room. Which has a cascade of implications in terms of their care. Often this kind of thing is a function of how much the patient can afford, which is significantly decreased after a hospitalization. So the prospect of having better care (via technology, since nursing homes are chronically understaffed) to prevent preventable hospitalizations is so so cool.