Staying Strong with TelehealthRemote Monitoring of Vital Health Signs — Agentur Pty Ltd

Staying Strong with TelehealthRemote Monitoring of Vital Health Signs (113)

Indra Arunachalam 1 , Shelly Reynolds 2 , Harry Randhawa 2
  1. integratedliving Australia Ltd, Muswellbrook, NSW, Australia
  2. Carbal Medical Centre, Toowoomba, QLD, Australia

Background:

The National E-Health Strategy aims to give consumers greater control over their own health outcomes. Evidence shows lack of control (actual or perceived) over aspects of one’s life is a contributor to poor health.
Staying Strong is an eighteen-month pilot project by integratedliving Australia to trial two models of telehealth monitoring for older Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians in NSW and QLD. Through the pilot project, Carbal Medical Centre, Toowoomba and integratedliving are using technology to empower people to better manage their own health conditions.

Methods:

Two telehealth models are employed:
• In-home monitoring
• Multi-user monitoring at a Hub, e.g. Aboriginal Medical Service (AMS).
An independent evaluation was conducted via surveys, yarning circles and one-on-one interviews with project participants, stakeholders and project team members.

Results/Discussions:

 Factors enabling older Indigenous people to participate in telehealth monitoring of their vital health signs included GP and AMS involvement, RN support and community acceptance. The main factors inhibiting regular monitoring were time and family commitments. The results also provide some indication of the impact of telehealth monitoring on GP visits and unplanned hospitalisations.

Conclusions/implications:

The evaluation shows that participants became more aware of their own health conditions and took control of their health management and lifestyle choices, shifting the focus to health prevention. Key implications are:
• Telehealth / technology worked well with indigenous people’s visual learning preferences, making this a viable model of service delivery;
• The importance of strong partnerships across mainstream / indigenous sectors, and between health / aged care services; and
• The benefits of mixed models for meeting different client needs.

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