Chilmark: Providers Should Try RPM

By Katie Wike, contributing writer

According to a Chilmark Research report, despite it being a still maturing market, providers should set their sights on remote patient monitoring in the coming year.

Providers are highly interested in remote patient monitoring (RPM), according to a report from Chilmark Research. The report explains that, despite the fact the RPM market is still maturing, providers are right to invest in this up and coming technology.

“Despite the broad interest in these new models of care, it is clear that this market is in its very early stages of maturity,” Chilmark writes in the report. “There are no standard customers and there is a high degree of variation among vendors. We have found little uniformity in application/use cases even within the context of a single disease state, and even less so in terms of monitoring a large, chronically ill population.”

MobiHealth News explains RPM technology is becoming commoditized as payers and providers discover that affecting outcomes takes more than just deploying remote patient monitoring technology.

“The notion that simply discharging patients with some technology will prevent readmission or ensure positive outcomes is more wishful thinking than reality,” the report REVEALS. “Today, the provision of wraparound resources — social or educational platforms (e.g. PatientsLikeMe), companion apps, and so on — remains rare. While innovations in mobile technology — mobile electrocardiograms (ECG), for example — may introduce convenience, they can be tricky to use correctly and consistently with a single patient — let alone across a population.”

According to iHealth Beat, reasons RPM adoption has lagged include reimbursement issues, alarm fatigue, lack of proper staff training, a need to educate patients about the tools, and workflow revisions needed to support the additions to care. Despite this, experts predicted that remote patient monitoring will grow because of the shift toward value-based payment models.