Wartburg Selected to Pilot a New Remote Patient Monitoring System
Pace University and Vital Care Services, a Telehealth Company, Team Up With Wartburg to Test New Program
Mount Vernon, NY April 9, 2014 — Vital Care Services and Pace University have chosen Meadowview Assisted Living at Wartburg to pilot a new, remote telehealth patient monitoring program. What is unique about the pilot program is that Pace student technicians will visit Wartburg every Monday to assist seniors in taking their vital signs, which are then monitored remotely by a registered nurse at Pace. Twenty residents at Wartburg are now participating in the pilot.
Key objectives of the pilot are to curb healthcare costs by reducing hospital admissions and ER visits; increase access and quality of care for the elderly, and train future working professionals at the university level. Last year, Vital Care and Pace University were selected as a winner of the first annual PILOT Health Tech NYC grant, an initiative launched last year by the City of New York and the New York City Economic Development Corporation.
Telehealth systems are used today to communicate patient health data electronically to improve a patient’s long-term health management and outcomes. At Wartburg, for example, blood pressure readings, oxygen saturation readings, and weight are taken at Meadowview and sent automatically to a remote Pace RN. When these remote readings are high or low, nurses at Wartburg are alerted to provide early evidence-based interventions.
“Telehealth systems will be increasingly important in the future because the number of practicing physicians will not be able to handle the increase in population of the elderly. So the elderly will rely on telehealth to live better and improve their quality of life,” said Jean F. Coppola, PhD, Associate Professor at Pace University Seidenberg School of Computer Science and Information Systems and principal investigator of the pilot. “Our research in Gerontechnology has shown that older adults want to learn the technology and that they can learn it to the point where they can do it on their own after a few lessons.”
“We are excited about participating in the telehealth program,” said David Gentner, President and CEO of Wartburg. “Anytime we can use technology to improve safety and outcomes of our patients furthers our institutional goals. It is our hope that this pilot will lead to improved integration of our post-acute health delivery systems with university-level program evaluation.”
“Our mission is to provide personalized teleheath monitoring allowing seniors to age in place in their own living communities,” says Dave Gaur, co-founder of Vital Care Services. “Increasing access to healthcare, improving quality of care, and reducing costs to patients and providers are our main priorities. After a successful 6-month pilot in four diverse independent senior living communities in New York City, we are excited to research telehealth solutions in Wartburg’s assisted living setting.”
The telehealth system utilizes today’s growing number of telecommunications technologies, such as secure Wi-Fi, 4G LTE, Face-to-Face Video, SMS, Bluetooth connections and more. Over the past decades, remote patient monitoring has proven to conveniently and effectively lower healthcare cost and improve accessibility while achieving better health outcomes.
Wartburg
Wartburg is an award-winning provider of comprehensive senior services, including independent living, assisted living, Alzheimer’s/dementia care, skilled nursing, rehabilitation and hospice care. Its 34-acre campus in Mount Vernon serves seniors and their families in southern Westchester and the northern Bronx. Wartburg’s nursing home has been recognized by U. S. News & World Report as among the best nursing homes in New York State. Over the past few years, Wartburg has launched an ambitious building expansion program, including the Friedrichs Residence, with 61 independent living apartments, and a rehabilitation and adult day services center, both opened in 2013. For nearly 150 years, The Wartburg has stayed true to a single mission: to nurture and heal the body, mind and spirit of each person entrusted to our care. The children who grew up at The Wartburg Orphans’ Farm School in decades past received the same compassionate and attentive care as the seniors in our care today living on our campus and in the neighboring communities.
About Vital Care Services
Vital Care offers comprehensive solutions for the growing healthcare market. Established when it became evident there was a need to implement cost-effective solutions for health and wellness care delivery, Vital Care specializes in designing personalized remote patient healthcare monitoring for individuals and providers in their own living setting. The company’s solutions ensure that patients stay healthy, follow their designed care plans, and avoid costly hospital readmissions and ER visits. Vital Care’s solutions specialize in personal relationships between patients and clinicians. Using advanced, portable, consumer friendly telehealth technology, healthcare providers can interact with their remote-location patients as often as necessary, and implement a customizable regimen to match each patient’s individual needs. The innovative telehealth software running on commercial tablets is simple to operate for patients with no prior computer experience. These Wi-Fi or 4G LTE tablets relay vital sign measurements, personalized daily questions, medication reminders, and clinical advice immediately through encrypted a HIPAA compliant messaging from secure servers. The patient is connected anywhere, and at any time to a healthcare provider. www.myvics.com
About Pace University
Since 1906, Pace University has educated thinking professionals by providing high quality education for the professions on a firm base of liberal learning amid the advantages of the New York metropolitan area. A private university, Pace has campuses in Lower Manhattan and Westchester County, NY, enrolling nearly 13,000 students in bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral programs in its Lubin School of Business, Dyson College of Arts and Sciences, College of Health Professions, School of Education, School of Law, and Seidenberg School of Computer Science and Information Systems. The Gerontechnology Research Team at Pace University is led by the principal investigators on this pilot: Jean Coppola, PhD with the Seidenberg School of Computer Science and Information Systems. The Seidenberg School of Computer Science and Information Systems’ initiative is addressing technical, business, legal, policy, and strategic issues. These issues are being addressed to support the implementation of telehealth services, incorporating on-site/off-site personnel, and the application of data mining and other emerging technologies. http://www.pace.edu/seidenberg
