What Does Patient Centricity Look Like at Home?
Patient centricity seems to be one of the more popular phrases buzzing around the healthcare industry – and with good reason.
Taken as a whole patient centricity encompasses a number of initiatives all designed to make taking medicine, and the entire healthcare experience, better for patients.
Starting with drug development, formulators are tasked with making products easier to take, with fewer side-effects, in forms that don’t require office visits.
Clinical trials, which have traditionally been challenged with keeping participants engaged due to many factors, are now moving more towards a decentralized approach. This trend started before the pandemic, but its implementation has been hastened by COVID-19 as clinical trial participants have, rightfully so, been fearful to travel to clinics for routine monitoring.
Telehealth has also exploded in popularity due to the pandemic. Many routine office visits can now be done remotely, without exposure to other patients. A boon in these pandemic times, and a real benefit for those who have difficulty in travelling to a doctor’s office.
Moving many health-related procedures from the office to the home is another patient-centric initiative that has gained momentum is recent years.
If you have read my columns over the years, you probably know I have had diabetes for about a dozen years now. As the disease has progressed, I have had to do more at home to keep track of, and treat my diabetes.
I distinctly remember the first time I had to check my blood glucose using a lancet device and my blood glucose meter. It was a scary moment; I had never done anything like that; prior to this day every time my blood glucose was taken it was done in a doctor’s office. But it was now up to me – and I did it – and became accustomed to it.
Years later as I needed insulin, I was shown, once, how to use a pen injector by my doctor and then sent home with a prescription for insulin and pen needles. Again, doing this at home is preferable to having to go to a clinic, but there definitely was a learning curve and some anxiety to overcome.
Finally, and most recently, my doctor recommended that I investigate using a Continuous Glucose Monitor (CGM). These devices, about the size of a small flash drive, attached to you skin and read you blood glucose every five minutes, sending the reading to you phone. It’s a fantastic little device, and eliminates multiple, daily finger pricks to test blood sugar.
I dutifully made an appointment with the diabetes education center at the local hospital.
Once there the educator discussed how the device works, and that I would be “test-driving” it for 10 days to see if I liked it.
She explained how it works and also how to attach it. She then “installed” the device on me – gave me a few instructions and told me to come back in ten days.
For diabetics, a CGM is a game-changer. Being able to monitor you blood sugar almost instantaneously without finger pricks is amazing. I went back for my follow-up exciting to get going.
Once all the paperwork was filled out, and insurance was figured out, I received a big box in the mail. Inside was the sensor, the transmitter, and the applicator. What to do?
I thought about calling my doctor or the diabetes education center but I hesitated. If this was the future of healthcare at home, I had to do it myself. Honestly it wasn’t that difficult, and I’m happy to say it was a success.
So, what does this tell us about patient centricity?
For me, it says that the efforts of many in the healthcare industry to make products more user-friendly has been wildly successful.
The ability, and the freedom, to do so many health-related tasks at home is huge shift for patients – like me.
While the pandemic has increased the use and acceptance of many of these technologies, my hope is that their availability and ease-of-use increases.
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