The Use of Mobile Phones in the Remote Monitoring of Patient Conditions
Introduction Verdant Health was an active participant in providing innovative technology to researchers to explore how mobile technologies can be used to support the development of self-management and self-efficacy amongst cystic fibrosis (CF) sufferers across Tasmania. There are currently few systems that allow patients to remotely monitor and self-manage their health conditions in a non-obtrusive and cost effective manner.

Technology has a vital role to play in enabling home based medical systems. Past research has highlighted positive outcomes for patients with chronic illness in self–managing their conditions with ICTs. It is acknowledged that computer based support systems can be valuable tools to assist with the management, education and ongoing care of a patient’s chronic illnesses. In particular, wireless mobile technologies are well suited to support the remote self-management and self-monitoring of a chronic health condition with patient cohorts that are geographically dispersed or where cross-infection is a clinical risk 		The Use of Mobile Phones in the Remote Monitoring of Patient Conditions
 
The Use of Mobile Phones in the Remote Monitoring of Patient Conditions    The Use of Mobile Phones in the Remote Monitoring of Patient Conditions Aims and Objectives The aim of this project was to determine the impact of a mobile system on CF patient’s ability to self manage and monitor their condition.

The Architecture This project developed a model of integrated care that promotes patient self-management and self-efficacy supported by an information system. It is anticipated that this will promote the participant’s active involvement in their own management, health care decisions and improve quality of life.

The design of the mobile system was broken down into three core components.
  1. The development of a suitable mobile phone application that captures and renders clinical information from patients.
  2. The development of a mobile phone server application to capture and send clinical information to each patient involved with the mobile phone trial.
  3. The development of a database with a web-based interface to store all phone data, action plans and progress notes.
Every day CF patients run a customise CF application on their mobile phones that poses a set of questions forming a daily symptom diary. On average it takes a patient four minutes to complete the diary. A data packet is then sent to a messaging server for capture and passed on to a database for consolidation and interpretation. Mentors and researchers are able to access a real time feeds of the information as it is sent via an online interface. This means that mentors and patients can be located remotely from the data service but still interact with the system in real time. CF patients also have the facility to gain a summary of key data
The Use of Mobile Phones in the Remote Monitoring of Patient Conditions
 
Outcomes To date a number of experiences and insights have been generated by this on-going project:
  1. The time required to capture daily symptom information is relatively short and the mobile system supports the rendering of progress information in real time.
  2. The messaging of clinical information via SMS is very cost effective and sustainable.
  3. The interface used in the mobile phone application is highly intuitive and has incurred only limited time and training cost with this patient cohort.
  4. The use of mobile phones does not inhibit the scope of the patient’s daily activities and is successfully integrated into their other use of the phone.
  5. Patients enjoy the flexibility of being able to complete or review data as and when it is convenient for them.
Early indications are that self-management will be improved in both active arms of the trial. It remains too early to make specific remarks about the impact of the mobile system per se.