Hand opening a refrigerator door.
Artificial intelligence is helping keep frail British patients in their own homes after they leave hospital.
Smart appliances have helped cut readmission rates at a public hospital provider in the southeast of England.
The devices contain sensors that monitor an individual’s behavior. AI software then alerts a care team if it spots behavior changes that might indicate a patient needs extra help.
Movement sensors in kettles and fridges, for example, work “as a proxy to understand whether hydration and nutrition is changing over time,” Adrian McCourt, who directs the service for facilities management firm Sodexo, told the Financial Times.
Non-clinical staff follow up and try and solve any issues, providing extra assistance with things like grocery shopping and cleaning.
If necessary, problems are escalated to a clinical team.
Around 140 recently-discharged patients have used the devices at home over the last 12 months as part of a pilot scheme from Sodexo and public provider Buckinghamshire Healthcare Foundation Trust (BHFT).
Normally, around 40% of patients who are considered frail and who may not have totally recovered from a spell in hospital end up back on a ward within the next six months, McCourt said.
This proportion fell by 77% among those who used the AI devices for 12 weeks after their initial discharge.
It’s hoped technological innovations like virtual wards and projects like this one will help ease pressure on physical hospital sites.
The U.K.’s public health system desperately needs to improve hospital discharge rates and free up beds, particularly as winter starts to bite.
The country’s hospitals are struggling to discharge some of their patients, limiting the number of beds available for new patients. This can increase emergency room waiting times, ambulance handover delays and ambulance response times.
In some cases, patients are medically fit to leave hospital, but don’t have enough support to be safely discharged back into the community.
Schemes that help people to stay at out of hospital not only keep beds free, but can improve outcomes for patients themselves. Every day a person stays in hospital, they can lose around 15% of their strength, according to BHFT.
Sodexo hopes to work with other public health service trusts to introduce the programme to more patients across the country, the FT reports.
The Buckinghamshire pilot, called “Onward Care,” was recently shortlisted for an award from prestigous industry publication the Health Service Journal.
Trust deputy chief operating officer Jenny Ricketts said at the time that the scheme, which has been running for 12 months, was an opportunity to focus on “the contributing wider determinants of health.”
She said patients had “a very positive experience” of working with the Onward Care team and felt “a lot more confident being at home.”
It also helped link up members of the public with community services they may not have known existed before using the service. “Onward Care has been the glue that has helped pull these resources together in a simple and supportive way,” she said.
“We’re not aware of any other service or scheme like it,” she added.
Adrian McCourt said the approach helped minimise “demands on ward time” and “empowered patients” to use existing local services.
“We can then use data to predict readmissions and target resources at those who will benefit most.”
Ricketts told the FT that AI wasn’t intended to remove the human element of care. Rather, it “is here to work with us.”
“People, especially the elderly, like human contact. The AI just makes it easier for us to do that.”
