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Digital health solutions can play a major role in improving quality of life for heart failure patients through regular monitoring and symptom tracking, stated Dr. Sid Kolwankar, AVP clinical at Wellthy Therapeutics.
DTx platforms also help upskill caregivers to take better help from their loved ones and remote patient monitoring and digital health solutions empower patients to improve clinical outcomes.
Dr. Kolwankar stated that another feature of remote monitoring is generating awareness about the fundamentals so that heart failure patients can identify symptoms early and seek help as and when required.
“The awareness could help the patients to seek correct help at the right time. As part of the programme, patients are taught exactly how and why to monitor their vitals. Finally, and most importantly, heart failure patients are provided psychological help so they can navigate through the emotional stress that the condition might be causing,” added Dr. Kolwankar.
The term of heart failure can imply that the heart has stopped functioning, however, the term means that the heart is not pumping enough blood to its capacity. The heart failure condition is a chronic and progressive condition, which affects the daily life and basic activities like walking or climbing stairs of the patients.
While there is no permanent cure for the condition, patients can still lead a normal life if the recommended lifestyle modifications are followed.
Remote monitoring is a tool that could cement the gap in access to seamless healthcare. In the era of digitization, there is a pressing need for augmentation to the existing methods of care in order to help patients navigate through their daily life with less obstacles and minimise the burden on HCPs.
Dr Kolwankar added, “India is yet to completely adopt the virtual self care method for heart failure patients. In India, chronic heart failure patients rely heavily on their cardiologists for even their basic queries. Moreover, travelling to the hospital or clinic for follow ups could be tedious, particularly for patients in the Tier II and III towns as the access to healthcare and specialists is limited. The dependency increases the time lag and soon the predicament could lead to a fatal escalation requiring hospitalization.”
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