Healthcare Challenges for an Aging Population in a Smart City

A smart city leveraging on advanced IT technologies can help to improve lifestyle and alleviate long standing problems for our aging population.

With up to 80% of global health spending attributable to chronic diseases, current healthcare systems will no longer be able to care for the aging public (York Chow 2009), and most people will need to be cared for and treated at home.  "More and more patients will be treated or cared for outside hospitals, in their homes, GP practices, nursing homes, day surgeries, day clinics, day rehabilitation, and – over the Internet.” (WHO 2008). This means there will be a growing need for health data to be transmitted securely and reliably from homes to health organizations and practitioners. In fact, most developed countries have already embarked on e-health trials. Leveraging its strengths in ICT, Hong Kong Telecom has also taken the lead and created a smart health service to serve this upcoming need and demand, and to help shape the solution to come.

Getting back at silent killers:  increase health awareness and compliance by remote monitoring at home

If chronic patients are to stay at home while being cared for and treated, then home health monitoring will naturally become a necessary part of their daily routines. Trials after trials have shown such can raise patient self and family health awareness, while improving medication and lifestyle compliance. The latter take the form of taking regular measurements, eating healthy foods and exercising more.  With the high broadband connectivity available in Hong Kong, eSmarthealth enable users to start home health monitoring most conveniently.  Users only need to have an internet connected PC or  HKT's Eye home tablet to transmit their health data to eSmarthealth.  The cloud health service then empowers authorized care takers, healthcare professionals or organizations to improve the caring of the patients residing at home. The biometrics currently covers activity level, body weight and composition, blood pressure and blood glucose levels.

Working with Senior Citizen Home Safety Association (SCHSA), HKT launched the “eSmartHealth nurse call service” in April 2013 to care for elderly needing home assistance for blood pressure or blood glucose monitoring. By using the “Eye” home tablet and locally trusted brands of blood pressure monitor and blood glucose monitors, seniors simply measure their blood pressure or glucose regularly at home. Nurses at the SCHSA then can remotely observe their health conditions and make proactive caring calls to elderly whenever their levels are abnormal or when they forget to take measurements. Family members and care takers of the elderly can also benefit from peace of mind by receiving SMS alerts shared by SCHSA nurses whenever appropriate.

Promoting preventive health in the community for the aged Aside from homes, nonprofit and private organizations also have a critical role to play in a smart city environment that is proactive in fighting escalating health cost from an aging population.  In the future these locations are also key health data collection points of presence. To empower these organizations, to promote prevention and perform health monitoring, eSmarthealth has launched another enterprise solution to facilitate easy health data collection. The solution caters to corporates and senior community centers or day care centers and allow sharing of equipment amongst multiple users in a common location. This lowers the costs per individual users and allows organizations to become active promoters of preventive health in a group setting. Whenever needed, users can also get additional nursing consultation from SCHSA nursing hotline service. The popularity of pilots with our partners show there is a strong need and demand for such organizations based health monitoring service in Hong Kong.

Benefits to the individual, the community and healthcare system

eSmartHealth cloud health management solution helps to increase self awareness of personal health condition and promote lifestyle modifications. Users improve self monitoring, exercise more and eat

more healthily. These new habits helps to defer chronic disease deterioration and minimize the potential physical, mental and financial impacts of medication, treatments and hospitalization. The cloud platform facilitates better communication and social sharing between patients, their family members or healthcare professionals to help provide better quality care.

eSmarthealth’s application of connected devices and cloud technology for everyday home health monitoring help users to take an active approach to contain further deterioration of their chronic diseases, which are typically “silent killers” if left unchecked. When applied in a large scale, it can help to slow the rapidly escalating economic demands on healthcare resources in the society today.