One of the biggest obstacles for many patients with COPD is getting access to care, with only approximately 1,700 pulmonary rehabilitation centers in the U.S. available to 14 million COPD patients.
A new study published in BMC Digital Health and led by researchers from the UMass Chan Medical School Program in Digital Medicine demonstrated that a multimodal, digital, community-based intervention was feasible and decreased illness-related distress in treating patients with COPD.
According to a news release, patients who participated in the Healthy at Home Study were less likely to be hospitalized, and those who were hospitalized had 61% decreased odds of readmission within 30 days of hospitalization.
The study was conducted with virtual health care company Wellinks and the CareEvolution health data platform. Over 18 months, 100 patients with COPD who were at risk of requiring acute care within the next six months were enrolled in the pilot study.
Components of the Healthy at Home program included home-based, mobile-integrated health services, a physician supervised team of paramedics available 24/7 to perform in-home medical care, a mobile-integrated health dashboard that displays biometric data from wearable sensors and other health-related data and Wellinks’s virtual-first COPD management solution, which includes virtual pulmonary rehabilitation, personalized health coaching and monitoring through connected devices.
The early findings suggest that the patients were able to adhere to the mobile interventions and experience a higher quality of life.
“Even in our relatively small study, the fact that we found statistically significant findings of clinically relevant improvement associated with use of this technology was really an ‘Aha!’ moment for us,” said principal investigator Apurv Soni, MD, PhD, assistant professor of medicine and co-director of the Program in Digital Medicine. “We did not anticipate that it would be this impactful. We just wanted to demonstrate proof of concept.”
