CJPS Medical Systems to launch VitalPoint Remote Patient Monitor in the U.K.

Jan 19 2011

CJPS Medical Systems are launching into the U.K. market this week their VitalPoint® Remote Patient Monitor, a medical device capable of measuring patients' vital signs from home, allowing secure and direct communication with their caregiver, creating electronic medical records, and transmitting vital signs data.

“Everyone agrees that the only way to provide better care to a rapidly aging population while reducing healthcare costs, given the shortage of nurses and physicians, is to enable and deploy homecare monitoring”

According to experts, eight out of ten older adults are living with the health challenges of one or more chronic diseases, ones that are long lasting, incurable, or recurrent. For these patients, prevention of reoccurrence and health monitoring are critical to their recovery, safety and quality of life, for which remote patient monitoring (RPM) such a VitalPoint®, has been shown to be extremely effective. They can help older patients slow progression of chronic diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, congestive heart failure (CHF), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and end-stage renal disease (ESRD).

VitalPoint® is a very user-friendly device due in part to its very intuitive touch screen interface which was specifically designed for the older population for which it is targeted. Patients can receive automatic reminders, instructions, or custom questions from the caregiver, but more importantly they can easily respond or send information without any technical knowledge, by simply pressing their answers, right onto the screen. They practically go through an interactive set of assessment questions that are typically asked by a physician or a nurse, and which differ depending on their particular situation.

This standalone device can monitor blood pressure, blood oxygen saturation, pulse rate, weight, glucose level, prothrombine time and ratios, temperature, fluid status, and provide electrocardiogram data. The ability of the caregivers to remotely monitor patients' conditions using their computer or cell phone, help them focus on the most critical patients, thus optimizing resources and providing care where and when patients need it most. To avoid data overload, the caregiver can easily setup alerts for any data being taken, and only be paged if the patient is not compliant, does not send scheduled measurements such as blood pressure readings, or if the patient's data is outside the physician's pre-set range.

These types of systems could provide formidable cost savings to the U.K. healthcare system if they were utilized in just a handful of chronic diseases on patients 65 years old and older, not only through treatment compliance monitoring, but also from risky event prevention. Chronic disease accounts for three quarters of the U.K.'s direct health expenditures, and chronically-ill patients cost 3.5 times as much to serve compared to others, and account for 80% of all hospital bed days and 96% of homecare visits.

"Everyone agrees that the only way to provide better care to a rapidly aging population while reducing healthcare costs, given the shortage of nurses and physicians, is to enable and deploy homecare monitoring", states Christophe Sevrain, the CEO of US-based CJPS Medical Systems. "Patients' compliance to their treatment regimen, and the monitoring of their health to prevent adverse effects are absolutely critical to not only a reduction in the cost of care, but also to the quality of life of these patients affected by chronic diseases", he adds.

In addition, this particular system combines these vital signs monitoring data with other patients' data such as allergies, prescriptions, treatments, medical history, and insurance information.

"This is Healthcare IT at its best", continues Sevrain. "Not only does it lower the cost of healthcare by potentially preventing emergency situations and by creating digital medical records, but it is also better care as the monitoring is continuous and only abnormal situations are reported to caregivers, freeing them to focus on those patients that need most attention", he adds.