Healthcare professionals' current experiences shape future remote monitoring benefits

The future benefits expected of remote monitoring in healthcare are shaped by how professionals understand their current work and its associated challenges, a recent study from the University of Eastern Finland shows.

Researchers interviewed healthcare professionals involved in a remote-monitoring pilot for older patients with neurological conditions. The study examined home-based digital monitoring as a new way of organizing care, with nurses' day-to-day work playing a central role during the pilot phase, when remote monitoring was still being tested.

Nurses described remote monitoring as involving a considerable amount of day-to-day work, including advising and encouraging patients, solving technical problems and taking on new monitoring tasks. At the same time, remote monitoring was expected to make future nursing work more efficient and streamlined as technologies develop and practices become established. Patients were seen as needing considerable support in the early phases, while future patients were expected to manage more independently.

A key finding of the study was that experiences of remote monitoring and expectations about its future are closely connected, but not without tensions

The promises of digital health are not only about the future. They also shape how professionals understand their current work."

Melika Azim Zadegan, Doctoral Researcher, University of Eastern Finland

The study highlights that developing digital health services requires more than technological development. Attention must also be paid to how professionals experience changes in working practices and how they envisage the future of remote monitoring in their own work.

"It is important to study digitalization in healthcare while new ways of working are still being tested. This helps us understand how early experiences and future expectations are connected and what kinds of tensions may emerge between them," Azim Zadegan says.