Information needs in connected health:Telehealth solution effectiveness in COPD interventions

Violeta GaveikaiteESR 11

This project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under theMarie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 676201

1. IntroductionModern healthcare is financially unsustainable, which demandsinnovative healthcare structure changes in order to accommodatethe needs of an aging population, the spread of chronic anddegenerative diseases and also utilize the latest advances in dataanalytics and social technologies1. Despite the rapid adoption ofinformation technology in other industries, healthcare sectorreforms have lagged behind due to difficulties in adopting ITtechnologies2. My project focuses on information needs inconnected health, within the context of one of the most prevalentchronic diseases – COPD and what is needed for successfulimplementation of innovative telehealth interventions.

2. COPDChronic obstructive pulmonary disease affects a largeglobal population. It is one of the most prevalent chronicdiseases with a large healthcare burden. COPD is also apromising field for telehealth due to profound behavioraldisease etiology, like smoking. Furthermore, as mostdisease cases are mild, self-management is particularlyrelevant.

4. Digital intervention effectivenessCOPD has been one of the most prolific areas for digitalhealth innovation, however only few technologies havebeen successfully implemented. Therefore, this work isdone within Philips Research to learn from the previouscommercial efforts. So far we have determined, thateffectiveness monitoring is as critical as interventionsthemselves and we are developing more sensitiveinstruments to measure clinical and financial impacts ofnew technologies.

6. Acknowledgements and ReferencesI would like to thank Helen Schonenberg and Steffen Pauws for supervision at Philips research.[1] “What is e-health?”, Eysenbach, G., Journal of Medical Internet Research, 2001[2] “The ‘Big Data’ revolution in healthcare”, McKinsey, 2013

5. Research strategyQuestion: What attributes make a scalable and successful COPD telehealth intervention with clinical and financial outcomes?

While conducting research I will adhere to the following PICO framework:• Population. COPD Patients with telehealth solutions in the outpatient setting.• Type of intervention. Longitudinal observational studies and randomized clinical trials.• Comparison. Patient population without telehealth solutions for COPD.• Outcomes. Change in the most relevant clinical outcomes for telehealth patient management (e.g. exacerbations).

In order to understand the needs and behavior of COPD stakeholders (patients and program managers) I will:• Do meta-analysis on existing studies for COPD effectiveness evaluation for telehealth solutions.• Update existing systematic review on the impact of telehealth solutions for COPD clinical outcome management.• Use big data approaches to analyze data from completed and running studies at Philips and international COPD consortia.

3. Existing telehealth solutionsA meta analysis of published literature on COPD telehealthinterventions revealed, that mostefforts focused on clinicaloutcomes with little overlapBetween other importantaspects, such as economicefficiency, quality of lifeand physical activity. TheMost effective interventions successfully addressed multiple of these outcomes.

>40years

10% Mild

Moderate

Severe

Figure 1. Worldwide COPD prevalence

Figure 2. Current literature COPD intervention outcomes