Digital therapeutics and remote care: LMS platforms for digital health
In the previous articles we have talked about LMS platforms and their more or less traditional uses to set up Corporate Academies or online gyms: in this article we will talk about the key-role these infrastructures play in relation to digital therapeutics and remote care, the new digital health services.
DIGITAL HEALTH: BENEFITS AND ISSUES
The healthcare sector, as many others, has been involved in the last years in the development of technology, in particular in relation to the spread of remote care: digital therapeutics are born as an evolution of all the healthcare services – medical consultation, rehabilitation, prevention – using online platforms.
On one side, this has the clear advantage of limiting the need of transfers, on the other hand has the risk of being less effective due to the lack of human relations between doctor and patient, as already highlighted in the clinical trial for the REACT project.
However, the health emergency has proven that the future of healthcare is blended: a mix of live meetings when truly necessary and remote activities, useful to continue the therapy avoiding the therapist to lose control over the patient’s clinical pathway.
LMS PLATFORMS FOR DIGITAL THERAPEUTICS AND REMOTE CARE
If digital health is something we can be certain about, it is less clear how traditional bricks-and-mortar health facilities – such as hospitals, health and rehabilitation centers – could be moved online without becoming less effective.
Talking about this, a possible road to follow seems to be related to digital training, borrowing its infrastructures and organizational logic: as we have already said, in fact, LMS platforms have great flexibility, which makes them suitable even as a digital health solution.
If we think about health centers like corporate academies, we can also think about medical professionals like teachers who have to guide their “students” through a prevention process, if they are individuals at risk, or rehabilitation pathways when pathological. Keeping the parallelism going, then, the therapist will need to set the objectives and define the pathway structure, which will have live meetings or video calls, to keep contacts alive and help with progress evaluation, and self-paced activities, both physical and cognitive. Medical professionals will remotely monitor this process and collect data for early detection of worsenings: this will allow them to apply corrective strategies, adapting the therapy to the new conditions or call patients for preventive hospitalization.
WHY DOCTORS AND CAREGIVERS NEED DIGITAL HEALTH
Of course, this kind of organization is not suitable for every type of rehabilitation or prevention, since it cannot be used when tracking requires specific technical tools. However, it can be a very useful solution to “relieve” the healthcare system and optimize the valuable time of healthcare professionals. This would let them to follow more patients and control them even at home, promoting therapy compliance and avoiding many related issues.
In addition, using LMS platforms to manage health pathways allows therapists to share useful information with home care professionals or caregivers, who can cooperate with them to support patients following therapeutic indications and improve home care effectiveness.
LMS PLATFORMS FOR PATIENTS
Digital health patients can have different characteristics: they could be young and with strong digital skills, or elderly people with no digital skills at all. For this reason, it is fundamental that LMS platforms used for digital therapeutics have a facilitated access for patients, with a few essential features to let anyone follow their therapeutic indications at home or get in touch with the doctor when needed.
Content requires the same kind of attention: health professionals, together with a team of experts, will design exercises and informative materials to be user-friendly, adapted to patients’ age, skills, cognitive and physical deficits and any other factor that could affect the process.
As we have repeatedly mentioned, then, choosing the right LMS platform is fundamental to structure a digital therapeutics and remote care system: do you want to know more about how Quiddis Health could help you move to digital health solutions? Visit the dedicated page!
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