How To Care For Your Ageing Parents

Having Trouble Managing Your Parents' Health? SeniorConnect Offers Support

As the saying goes, "Having an elderly person at home is like having a treasure." While you dedicate yourself to your career, you cannot overlook your parents' health. It is essential for children to pay close attention to their parents' health conditions. Since you cannot stay with your parents for long periods, what can you do to ensure their well-being?

Subang Jaya Medical Centre (SJMC) previously launched the groundbreaking Connected Care telemedicine service, bringing seamless medical services to patients' homes through professional medical personnel. This allows patients and their families to access the necessary services anytime, anywhere.

SJMC's CEO, Bryan Lin, stated, " We want to shift from patients to people, from healthcare to health, from hospital to home."

Connected Care is a comprehensive, end-to-end healthcare system. This innovative remote patient care ecosystem integrates and extends online medical services into six areas of care, including SJMC's existing home care service, HomeConnect, telemedicine service, TeleConnect, and the new SeniorConnect service.

SeniorConnect is one of the core services of Connected Care, catering specifically to senior patients aged 65 years and above, who could be living apart from their loved ones with the support of a caregiver. It provides customised remote monitoring services. Through this service, medical specialists or clinicians can accurately record and closely monitor the patient's vital signs every day, providing immediate assistance when necessary. This advanced remote monitoring system ensures that senior patients receive the necessary care and attention, promoting their health and well-being, while also providing peace of mind to their families.

The establishment of SeniorConnect is based on the "3P" healthcare model adopted by the international healthcare industry, which actively prevents and treats diseases through personalisation, prediction, and prevention, thus forming an innovative remote patient care ecosystem.

Personalisation

Medical specialists tailor personalised remote medical monitoring plans based on the patient's health condition.

Prediction

Patients need to measure their blood pressure, temperature, heart rate, blood oxygen saturation, and blood sugar every day based on the medical specialist's customised monitoring plan. All measurement data will be transmitted to the hospital clinician’s dashboard, and family members, medical specialists, or nurses can view vital signs through a link.

Prevention

Clinicians or nurses closely monitor the patient's vital signs. In the event of irregularities, they will immediately contact family members or caregivers to take the patient to the hospital as soon as possible to avoid worsening conditions.

After the pandemic, Malaysians are no strangers to telemedicine. Telemedicine generally focuses on post-treatment, meaning that when someone is sick or unwell, they consult a doctor online. However, SeniorConnect combines online and offline services tailored for elderly patients, allowing them to receive continuous care regardless of their location, whether in the comfort of their homes or anywhere in the country or abroad, to achieve the goals of prevention, prediction, and personalised disease prevention and treatment.

Bryan Lin, SJMC CEO.

Medical Specialists Assess and Monitor Patients

SeniorConnect is a subscription-based service. Firstly, the primary doctor assesses elderly patients to determine their suitability for remote patient monitoring. Doctors will customise the remote patient monitoring plan based on their individual health conditions. Each SeniorConnect patient will receive a remote monitoring kit for measuring vital signs. All devices are medical-grade and approved and certified by the Medical Device Authority (MDA).

A qualified remote medical team will remotely monitor patients regularly every day, collect and monitor all vital signs data, use artificial intelligence to predict any irregular conditions and remind family members to take the patient to the hospital as soon as possible if necessary.

Lin emphasised that as Malaysia moves towards an aging society, young adults often work hard for their careers, focusing most of their time on work, and some even work abroad. Therefore, it is difficult for them to accompany their parents and stay at home. Children are unable to be with their parents, constantly worrying about their parents' health. Remote patient monitoring system allows caregivers and children to feel at ease because their loved ones are under the professional monitoring of reputable hospitals and qualified teams.

Combining technological advantages and professional medical care, remote patient monitoring service is suitable for patients with hypertension, diabetes, chronic diseases, or those who need to stay at home and undergo regular monitoring of their health conditions. Caregivers or domestic helpers can also assist in using the system.

Middle-aged and Elderly Malaysians Prefer Home Care

According to a survey from a research paper titled "Move or Not to Move?: Exploring future housing plans of aging communities in Kuala Lumpur" conducted by the University of Malaya in 2015, as many as 66% of respondents expressed unwillingness to move from their current homes for a more comfortable retirement, while only 22% were willing to move. The remaining small percentage of respondents were undecided or had not thought about this decision.

From the survey results, it can be seen that the majority of respondents prefer to stay in their own homes for retirement.

"Although many people hope to stay in their homes for their twilight years, they still believe that they need to go to the hospital to get better medical care. We hope to change this pattern by providing the care people need in the community to offer preventive, continuous, and transitional care. SJMC is changing the way care is provided, which is why Connected Care, including SeniorConnect, brings medical services seamlessly into patients' homes, making medical services closer to your life."

"Imagine having hospital-level medical services with you at every corner of your home, no matter where you are, allowing you to receive treatment and care comfortably and conveniently. In concept, SeniorConnect can be a hospital that transcends all physical boundaries and borders."

Lin emphasised that healthcare is embarking on the road to uberisation. This means that the focus of SeniorConnect is shifting from hospital patients to a wider audience, shifting medical attention from mere medical care to overall health and well-being, and extending hospitals into homes.

Since 2016, SJMC has been embarking on the path of digital healthcare and smart hospitals. At that time, SJMC fully implemented an electronic medical record system, converting all physical and handwritten records into digital format, allowing staff to quickly retrieve patient information. The continuity of patient care has improved, and patient safety has been further enhanced.

With this achievement, SJMC is more confident in building an interconnected care continuum ecosystem, leading to the innovation of HomeConnect, TeleConnect, and SeniorConnect from 2020 to 2023, forming today's Connected Care.

HomeConnect provides medical services for home-based or discharged patients, such as wound dressing, catheter care, feeding tube management, and physiotherapy; TeleConnect is a telemedicine service that provides online medical consultation, advice, and referral services by qualified doctors and nurses.

As a remote patient monitoring service, SeniorConnect uses the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) to record, monitor, and predict patients' health conditions. Currently, the specialties involved include nephrology, endocrinology, cardiology, rehabilitation, and palliative care.

Connected Care will launch GPConnect for connecting specialists with general practitioners and patients with heart disease, ICUConnect for critically ill patients, and HospitalConnect for post-discharge home care, providing patients with more comprehensive care services in the future.

SJMC Consultant Physician and Nephrologist, Dr Kenneth Lai.

Patient Self-Monitoring Improves Health Conditions

Since the introduction of SeniorConnect, Dr. Kenneth Lai has been using remote patient monitoring system to monitor the health conditions of patients with chronic kidney disease during the diagnosis and treatment process, and patients' good habits of self-monitoring have helped control the condition.

He pointed out that the main causes of chronic kidney disease are diabetes or hypertension. Diabetic patients need to monitor their blood sugar levels at least 2 to 3 times a day. Through self-monitoring of blood sugar, they can understand the changes in blood sugar levels and adjust their diet and exercise accordingly. At the same time, doctors can view the blood sugar records remotely, so that they can adjust the medication dosage when the patient returns for a follow-up visit based on the blood sugar records.

Previously, patients recorded their blood sugar values by hand in their own tables or notebooks, or by having caregivers help. Some patients may find it difficult to maintain this habit after a few days. Once patients stop recording their blood sugar values, it is also difficult for doctors to evaluate the changes in their blood sugar levels. If patients continue to measure and record their blood sugar values, maintaining good blood sugar records can reduce the number of measurements.

In another scenario, some patients suffer from White Coat Hypertension, meaning that they only have high blood pressure in the clinic, but their blood pressure is normal when they self-monitor at home or when no medical personnel are present. These patients need to self-monitor their blood pressure and pay close attention to changes in their blood pressure so that doctors can adjust their blood pressure medication dosage based on the changes in their blood pressure to avoid too high a dosage leading to low blood pressure and sudden fainting of the patients.

Dr. Lai believes that with remote patient monitoring service now available, patients can conveniently monitor their health conditions regularly at home. All measurement data will be stored in the cloud, bidding farewell to the past practice of handwritten records, and patients can also do it themselves without relying on caregivers, thus better controlling their blood sugar or blood pressure.

At the same time, doctors can review the measurement data of patients at any time, observe the patterns of data changes in patients over a period, and better understand the actual health conditions of patients.

He mentioned that hospitalised patients who have completed their treatment and stabilised can actually be discharged and return home. They only need to return to the hospital regularly for physical therapy, rehabilitation, or follow-up visits, and use remote patient monitoring system at home to continue monitoring their health conditions.

Some patients always feel reassured by resting in the hospital and receiving medical care, but staying in the hospital for too long can actually increase the risk of exposure to bacterial infections and increase medical costs. Some elderly patients feel comfortable in their home environment, but find it difficult to sleep or urinate normally in the hospital. Therefore, remote patient monitoring allows such patients to continue to receive appropriate care even at home.

Patients Manage Their Health at Home

Dr. Lai shared a successful case of one of his patients, who has been suffering from hypertension for a long time. Although she has been taking various blood pressure medications, there has been no significant improvement. Faced with this situation, the patient chose to stop taking the medication altogether, but her kidney function deteriorated.

Since the patient started using SeniorConnect, the doctor has been monitoring the patient's blood pressure and adjusting the medication dosage promptly to keep the patient's blood pressure stable after taking the medication, and the kidney index has also returned to normal levels. This shows a normal physiological response. After seeing an improvement in her health, the patient has more confidence in controlling her blood pressure. After one month, the patient no longer needs to use SeniorConnect, demonstrating the successful process of controlling the condition.

Dr. Lai believes that in this era of highly advanced technology, the proper use of technology can enhance efficiency. Remote patient monitoring system allows medical personnel to observe the health conditions of patients in real-time outside the conventional clinical environment. By detecting any changes early and maintaining communication with patients or caregivers, medical teams can intervene promptly in case of any conditions to prevent potential health problems from escalating. Through its functions, children and medical teams as caregivers can ensure the independence of their parents as patients or those under care while keeping them under close monitoring at home, thus managing their health better.

Source: Sin Chew

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