New project aims to improve long-term patient monitoring through remote assessment

Under conventional medical practice, monitoring long-term patients is done in the clinic or hospital, assessing such things as treatment effects, adverse events and disease course. In some cases, visits may not be frequent enough to identify individuals at risk of significant changes in disease state, including relapse. On the other hand, having to repeat monitoring procedures too often can be burdensome to both patients and healthcare providers.

The goal of the EU- and industry-funded RADAR-CNS project is to improve the patient-monitoring process through remote assessment. Project team members are creating a process for developing, testing and implementing wearable technologies for the remote measurement of depression, multiple sclerosis and epilepsy.

Although remote monitoring is still in its infancy, interest is growing in the application of such technologies in healthcare. For example, smartphone and wearable sensor technologies have already enabled a significant increase in the volume of patient information that can be collected unobtrusively and at low cost.

The RADAR-CNS team believe such technologies can be used to monitor long-term outcomes of patients, at scale, and provide detailed information on outcomes. The resulting data can be made available for review in real time by patients, clinicians and researchers and at low cost, enabling medical services to offer more responsive and efficient care.

The process includes a data-management and modeling framework, applicable to a variety of disorders and with enough flexibility of design to be future-proofed against further technological innovation.

The team is collecting information about implementation barriers and facilitators gleaned from patients, clinicians, regulators and funding bodies. This will smooth the way for future regulatory approval and uptake.

In bringing remote assessment technologies to the healthcare sector, the RADAR-CNS project may help optimize the number of clinical visits required. This will result in improved efficiency on the part of care givers, as well as real improvements in patient outcomes.