Remote Patient Monitoring: A Promising Digital Health Frontier

The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the need to harness and leverage digital tools and technology for remote patient monitoring (RPM). RPM involves the monitoring of biometrics outside of the hospital or clinic setting with the associated transmission of data to clinicians in a manner that allows actionable insights to improve health outcomes [1]. There are many benefits of RPM for clinicians — ease of access to patient data, the ability to deliver higher-quality care to more patients with a lower risk of burnout — and for healthcare providers — lower costs and higher efficiency, to name just a couple. RPM will be limited in its impact until engagement and adherence can be maximized. We report on our ongoing implementation research with multiple academic and community partners to enhance RPM solutions to increase adherence and patient engagement in diverse patient settings. We demonstrate that RPM solution based on health behavior models and personalized coaching is technically feasible with high adherence rates. This work, however, remains in its infancy. Despite growing interest in remote patient monitoring, substantial gaps in the evidence base needed to be addressed using implementation and behavior science methods to support its ability to improve outcomes. Specifically, questions that remain unresolved include: How effective are RPM devices and associated interventions in changing important clinical outcomes of interest to patients and their clinicians? Which elements of RPM interventions lead to a higher likelihood of lasting success in affecting clinically meaningful outcomes? Which patient populations would benefit most? Rigorous, ongoing evaluation of RPM devices and platforms will be essential for elucidating their value and driving coverage decisions and adoption programs for the most effective solutions.