ATA trend #2: is this the ‘second generation’ of remote patient monitoring?

Guest columnist Dr Vikrum (Sunny) Malhotra attended ATA 2015 last week. This is the second of three articles on his observations on trends and companies to watch.

During the course of the ATA conference, I was inundated with the concept of “dumb” data whereby biosensors track patient clinical data and will alarm to clinical staff if outside designated parameters. However, the call center filter between the patient’s data and physician is often a primary cause of increased unnecessary admissions. The Sentrian Remote Patient Intelligence Platform (Sentrian RPI) received recognition for its advancement in utilization of sensors, enabling healthcare providers to utilize this “dumb” data and make it “smart”. For clinicians like myself, this was a new way of looking at an age old problem: “How do we safely and comprehensively support physician decision making at a standard high enough to detect pathologies earlier and more accurately?”

Sentrian has used machine learning to support the work of a dedicated clinical team by monitoring patient data 24/7 to detect subtle signs that warn a family member or care provider of future problems through biometric patterns of thousands of patients, comparing their medical histories, vitals and health information. This novel approach to remote monitoring won Sentrian the ATA President’s Innovation Award.

“Sentrian provides clinical decision support through advanced analytics of multiple streams of biometric data” said Sentrian CEO Dean Sawyer. “The goal is to use this data to detect diseases earlier to reduce hospitalizations.”

Sentrian’s predictive analytics platform brings a new paradigm to the rapidly growing market for remote patient monitoring. The greatest challenge to remote patient monitoring is in modeling the complex interactions between sensor data, subjective observations, clinical correlation and detecting patterns that are predictive of a hospitalization or preventable disease progression. “For Sentrian RPI to be successful, we must show that there are hard outcomes that can be achieved through early and accurate detection of disease,” said Dr. Martin Kohn, Sentrian Chief Medical Scientist. At this time, Sentrian is seeking FDA Class 1 approval.

To me, Sentrian represents the second generation of remote patient monitoring where clinical decision support can be provided through data analytics while aspiring to eliminate preventable hospitalizations, and improve efficacy of care teams. For ACOs, Sentrian’s challenges will be to positively impact accountable care shared savings performance while integrating with health IT systems and our physician clinical workflows to ensure widespread adoption.

Vikrum (Sunny) Malhotra, MD is a US trained cardiologist who was named one of the top “Doctors on Twitter” to follow. He was named Best in Healthcare Ontario – Notable Young Professional 2014. He is an entrepreneur and health tech investor. He is the founder of Bookaclinic.com, a telemedicine practice in Ontario, Canada. @DrSunnyMalhotra

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