DECEMBER 2017
iHealthHome partnered with investigators at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center on the study entitled “Integrating a Telemonitoring Device into the Outpatient Management of Adult Patients Following Intensive Chemotherapy for Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) and High-Grade Myelodysplastic Syndrome (MDS): A Randomized Pilot Study,” which concluded that “Integrating a telemonitoring device into outpatient management of AML/MDS patients is feasible, well-received by patients and providers, and provides valuable, potentially actionable medical information.”
“Healthcare is moving rapidly to the home,” says Dew-Anne Langcaon, co-founder and CEO of iHealthHome. “Our mission is to provide a software platform and tools to enable providers to perform comprehensive care management for medically complex and elderly patients in their own home. We were thrilled to be part of this important study to test the hypothesis that in-home telemonitoring could facilitate patients who received intensive chemotherapy to recover at home rather than in the hospital and achieve the same or better outcomes at better cost.”
Dr. Anna Halpern of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center served as the Principal Investigator on the study that focused on the feasibility of home telemonitoring following intensive chemotherapy for AML/MDS patients. The study also looked at the impact of the telemonitoring intervention on mortality, healthcare resource utilization. All patients had received intensive chemotherapy, resided within an hour of the center and had a caregiver. Subjects were randomized to receive standard outpatient care either with or without the iHealthHome telemonitoring.
“While readmission rates were similar in both arms, costs were lower in the intervention arm than the control. Most notable, however, was the fact that in patients who required hospital readmission, this telemonitoring system recorded vital signs in the 24-hours prior to admission that showed changes consistent with impending infection,” reported Dr. Halpern. “With this kind of data from the home, early detection of vital sign abnormalities could allow for faster detection of infection and signs of deterioration such that vital sign data from home could provide a trigger for intervention to try to prevent readmissions.”
The results of this study were presented by Halpern at the Society for Hematologic Oncology (SOHO) Annual Meeting in September.
The study was initiated by Fred Hutch researchers. iHealthHome provided two devices and IT support to the study.
