New research suggests that the rapid adoption of remote patient monitoring technologies during the pandemic has set the stage for strong additional RPM uptake over the next five years.
A recent survey by VivaLNK, a vendor of connected healthcare solutions, found that 43% of respondents believe that the RPM adoption rate will be similar to the inpatient monitoring uptake within five years.
What’s more, 35% reported that they believe RPM adoption will actually grow faster than inpatient monitoring during this timeframe.
Researchers found that 20% of respondents had already adopted RPM, and that another 23% expect to do the same within the next 12 months. More than half (55%) reported that they are using or plan to use RPM to monitor COVID-19 cases.
Among the reasons providers are jumping into RPM investments is patient preference. According to VivaLNK researchers, 72% of respondents said that in the wake of the pandemic, patients are reluctant to visit hospitals and doctors’ offices.
For it to work, however, RPM has to be around the clock, the survey found. Ninety percent of respondents said that continuous, 24-hour data generation was critical.
Another key concern related to workflow. Sixty-five percent of respondents said that EHR integration was essential to broad adoption of RPM technologies.
Despite its advantages, however, healthcare organizations aren’t prepared to bear the cost of RPM on their own. Fifty-five percent of respondents told the researchers that reimbursement is essential to the overall success of RPM programs.
If this survey’s conclusions reflect reality, this could represent a real turning point, not only for RPM adoption but for telemedicine as a whole. Obviously, the pandemic is the proximate cause of much of this growth, but that’s not the only reason for seeing RPM shine. What we’re seeing here is the delayed implementation of an approach that always made sense on paper.
For many years I’ve been writing about early technologies like the Fitbit which, while they gathered interesting data, were in no way seen as medical devices. Given that many early RPM schemes relied on wearables, RPM hasn’t as gotten much of a foothold in the care process as one might have expected.
Things have changed, however. While there are still many questions as to how much providers should rely on wearables, having been more or less forced to do so they have at least gotten a good sense of what wearables can and cannot do.
Given this immersion, which is actually quite late in coming, it should come as no surprise that RPM use is likely to grow. Now that providers have seen that RPM has a real purpose, and one that can’t be substituted for with existing technology, future use is all but given.
