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Two Key Ways Digital Health Solutions Make the Patient’s Life Easier

Life with a chronic illness is complex. Patients are left on their own to organize the many aspects of their daily self-care. Medications need to be taken. Signs and symptoms need to be monitored. Readings need to be recorded. And results need to be reported back to their healthcare team.

All of this must be attended to consistently—every single day. There are no days off or cheat days. Every day counts, weighing heavily on the patient both mentally and emotionally. The relentless nature of managing a chronic illness often leads to patient burnout and exhaustion, which undermines patients’ motivation to keep up with their self-care. Ultimately, this can lead to poor health outcomes for the patient.

Digital health solutions, like the spencer® Smart Hub, can play an important role in lightening the daily load for patients managing chronic illness. By automating key aspects of the patient’s daily self-care routine digital health solutions greatly reduce the burden patients face in managing their chronic illness. For the medical team, digital health solutions can result in easier access to better quality health data. Ultimately, these digital health solutions support better health outcomes.

Simplifying Medication Management

Patients with chronic illness often have complicated medication regimes to follow. A digital health solution can greatly simplify managing medication by dispensing presorted pills on a set schedule.

Instead of having to sort through pill containers several times a day, patients get all the pills they need to take presorted into sealed packs at the time they need to take them. What was once a more complicated process is reduced to two steps: respond to the preset alarm and take all of the pills in the sealed pack that is dispensed.

Additionally, the digital health solution helps ensure that the patient takes their medications consistently as prescribed.

Automatically Capturing Accurate Health Data

Many patients with chronic illnesses use medical devices to monitor their health. These devices include monitors for blood pressure, heart rate, blood glucose levels, and breathing while at sleep. Each of these devices collects data for the patient and medical team to use.

Traditionally, collecting and sharing this data required patients to keep a log or take the monitoring device into their doctor’s office for a data download. But when the medical device and digital health solution are cloud-connected this data can be collected, stored, and transmitted automatically.

By eliminating the need for manually logging readings and other data these digital health solutions bring more ease to patients’ daily routine. For healthcare teams, automating this data collection results in easier access to more comprehensive, more accurate health data.

Digital Health Solutions Lead to Better Health Outcomes

Easing patients’ daily workload by automating how medications are dispensed and health data is collected are two key leverage points for digital health solutions that can lead to better health outcomes.

Whenever we can simplify or eliminate processes in patients’ daily self-care routine we make their lives easier. More importantly, we alleviate the mental and emotional load that leads to patient burnout and exhaustion. This makes it easier for patients to maintain their self-care routines, not just for today but, for the long haul.