Medical Design and Outsourcing

  • Home
  • Medical Device Business
    • Mergers & Acquisitions
    • Financial
    • Regulatory
  • Applications
    • Cardiovascular
    • Devices
    • Imaging
    • Implantables
    • Medical Equipment
    • Orthopedic
    • Surgical
  • Technologies
    • Supplies and Components Index
    • Contract Manufacturing
    • Components
    • Electronics
    • Extrusions
    • Materials
    • Motion Control
    • Prototyping
    • Pumps
    • Tubing
  • MedTech Resources
    • Medtech Events in 2025
    • The 2024 Medtech Big 100
    • Medical Device Handbook
    • MedTech 100 Index
    • Subscribe to Print Magazine
    • DeviceTalks
    • Digital Editions
    • eBooks
    • Manufacturer Search
    • Podcasts
    • Print Subscription
    • Webinars / Digital Events
    • Whitepapers
    • Voices
    • Video
  • 2025 Leadership
    • 2024 Winners
    • 2023 Winners
    • 2022 Winners
    • 2021 Winners
  • Women in Medtech
  • Advertise
  • Subscribe

Helping to Reduce Hospital Admissions for COPD Patients

September 13, 2013 By SINTEF

Patients can use tablet computers to report their daily condition. Hospitals can pick up early symptoms, take action and thereby reduce admissions.

Product designer Jarl Reitan and his colleague Silje Bøthun are working on a preventative project for patients with advanced COPD. Five patients from Trondheim are currently testing a system using tablet computers and a customized app developed by SINTEF.

“The aim is to achieve a closer dialogue between the patient and the support services, prevent sudden dips in the patient’s medical condition and exacerbations of the disease”.

Digital Reporting
Using the app, patients submit a simple daily report to St. Olav’s Hospital, which receives the data about their current condition. Patients describe their general daily condition using simple, self-explanatory response options such as “good” or “bad.” They can also telephone the monitoring center from their tablet if they need to talk to someone.

The municipality is also working on setting up an emergency medical center to act as a call center for the chronically ill. This center will collect all the data reported by patients from their own homes, and will be able to follow up any patients that require attention. Since patients report their condition on a daily basis, and these data are analyzed by the medical center, patients do not need to worry that any exacerbations will not be picked up.

Repeated Hospitalizations
At the moment, COPD patients require frequent hospitalizations.

Clinic Manager Anne Hildur Henriksen of the Clinic for Thoracic Medicine at St. Olav’s Hospital says that many patients with advanced COPD end up in hospital because of an acute exacerbation of their condition. She refers to a Scandinavian study which found that the average length of stay of these patients was 8.6 days each time, and that 13% of the patients are admitted more than twice a year.

Tablet Is the Right Medium
The tablet computer was chosen as a medium because the tool is not associated with a stigma, and has many different applications. Many of the current aids send the opposite signal; with their large buttons and unusual design, they stand out in a patient’s living room. Tablets can be used by grandchildren when they come to visit, and the idea is also for the tablet to provide access to written information, videos and tutorials for patients.

“Providing the user with knowledge about the disease is a major part of the project, and will be incorporated into any future system. We want to help people with COPD to learn about their own disease – this will give them a better overview and more control”, explains Silje Bøthun. “That is why it is important for the patients to use the media over an extended period. We have loaded the tablets with games like cabal, and received enquiries about Facebook and yr.no. We also have to make the app interesting enough that people will use it”.

What Information Is Required?
The next step for the researchers is to work with the company Imatis to improve the technical aspects of the product, and to work with the users to improve its content.

“We need to find out what the patients think about the reporting tool, so that we can evaluate it. We are also working closely with the hospitals and municipalities, to find out what THEY need to know. The information that the patients need to pass on is not necessarily the same as that required by the hospital,” says Bøthun.

COPD patients currently report to the specialist health services or hospital, but the municipalities will soon be taking over this service.

Jarl Reitan believes that the municipalities probably do not have the expertise required to be able to make decisions about any action that may be needed, and that the new scheme will require good communication between the municipality and the hospital. “The municipalities’ emergency medical centers can share the computer screen with the hospitals if they need to, and staff there can examine the material in more detail and determine what treatment may be needed”, he says.
Read more: http://gemini.no/2007/03/kampen-mot-kols/

Municipalities Are Interested
At the moment, the municipalities of Trondheim and Bærum are leading the way in testing out this welfare technology, but Stavanger has also joined in – and “border” municipalities such as Bergen and Kristiansand think that the project is interesting and would like to be part of it at a later stage.

The idea is for patients’ data to be made easily available to their doctors and to the hospitals’ lung departments. This will enable them to more actively monitor the course of their patients’ disease, and will give them more options for communication and inter-departmental resource utilization.

“Communication between patients and the health services is a problem that is not just limited to people with COPD. This project has therefore received a great deal of attention, and we were recently mentioned in a new Report to the Storting,” relates Jarl Reitan of SINTEF.

Related Articles Read More >

A photo of Capstan Medical's mitral valve implant, which uses nitinol.
Capstan Medical’s R&D head discusses the heart valve and robotics startup’s tech, engineering challenges and solutions, advice for others in medtech and how to join his team
An illustration of a neurosurgeon using a robotic endoscope to remove a brain tumor.
MDO Nitinol Innovation Special Report
A photo of Highridge Medical CEO Rebecca Whitney.
Highridge Medical is betting on this spine tech
A photo of the miniature Auxilium Biotechnologies implants made on the International Space Station.
Implants 3D-printed in space could enable nerve regeneration
“mdo
EXPAND YOUR KNOWLEDGE AND STAY CONNECTED
Get the latest medical device business news, application and technology trends.

DeviceTalks Weekly

See More >

MDO Digital Edition

Digital Edition

Subscribe to Medical Design & Outsourcing. Bookmark, share and interact with the leading medical design engineering magazine today.

MEDTECH 100 INDEX

Medtech 100 logo
Market Summary > Current Price
The MedTech 100 is a financial index calculated using the BIG100 companies covered in Medical Design and Outsourcing.
DeviceTalks

DeviceTalks is a conversation among medical technology leaders. It's events, podcasts, webinars and one-on-one exchanges of ideas & insights.

DeviceTalks

New MedTech Resource

Medical Tubing

MassDevice

Mass Device

The Medical Device Business Journal. MassDevice is the leading medical device news business journal telling the stories of the devices that save lives.

Visit Website
MDO ad
Medical Design and Outsourcing
  • MassDevice
  • DeviceTalks
  • MedTech100 Index
  • Medical Tubing + Extrusion
  • Medical Design Sourcing
  • Drug Delivery Business News
  • Drug Discovery & Development
  • Pharmaceutical Processing World
  • R&D World
  • About Us/Contact
  • Advertise With Us
  • Subscribe to Print Magazine
  • Subscribe to our E-Newsletter
  • Listen to our Weekly Podcasts
  • Join our DeviceTalks Tuesdays Discussion

Copyright © 2025 WTWH Media, LLC. All Rights Reserved. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of WTWH Media LLC. Site Map | Privacy Policy | RSS

Search Medical Design & Outsourcing

  • Home
  • Medical Device Business
    • Mergers & Acquisitions
    • Financial
    • Regulatory
  • Applications
    • Cardiovascular
    • Devices
    • Imaging
    • Implantables
    • Medical Equipment
    • Orthopedic
    • Surgical
  • Technologies
    • Supplies and Components Index
    • Contract Manufacturing
    • Components
    • Electronics
    • Extrusions
    • Materials
    • Motion Control
    • Prototyping
    • Pumps
    • Tubing
  • MedTech Resources
    • Medtech Events in 2025
    • The 2024 Medtech Big 100
    • Medical Device Handbook
    • MedTech 100 Index
    • Subscribe to Print Magazine
    • DeviceTalks
    • Digital Editions
    • eBooks
    • Manufacturer Search
    • Podcasts
    • Print Subscription
    • Webinars / Digital Events
    • Whitepapers
    • Voices
    • Video
  • 2025 Leadership
    • 2024 Winners
    • 2023 Winners
    • 2022 Winners
    • 2021 Winners
  • Women in Medtech
  • Advertise
  • Subscribe