Napoli 1 Healthcare Center tests Ascom's Digistat® Wearables for the management of Covid-19 patients at home

For patients affected by Covid-19 who do not require hospital admission, the Napoli 1 Healthcare Center has decided to use digital technology and has implemented the Digistat® Wearables solution to remotely monitor the patients’ condition. This solution - once the Covid emergency is over - will also allow chronically ill patients to be monitored at home.

Approximately 130 of the Covid-19 patients currently being treated at the Napoli 1 Health Center are positive, and half of them are showing symptoms. To improve the management of care of symptomatic non-critical patients at home, the Napoli 1 Healthcare Center - the largest healthcare center in Europe - has decided to experiment with Ascom's Digistat® Wearables remote monitoring system. This solution is easy to use and makes it possible to safely and reliably monitor patients’ health status, while optimizing the workflows of health workers.

The procedure currently used by the health authority for monitoring patients at home consists of telephone contact and support. Patients report the parameters that they have measured themselves to health workers, who then manually update the digital health records of each patient. In order to optimize health workers' time, minimize the risk of data collection errors and adapt the process to the needs of modern medicine in terms of efficiency, safety and costs, the Napoli 1 Healthcare Center has decided to integrate its systems and experiment with Ascom’s Digistat® Wearables system on 100 home patients.

The Digistat® Wearables system is a kit consisting of wearable medical devices that are equipped with sensors and associated with the Myco 3 professional grade smartphone - a device that is compliant with the harmonized standards EN 60601-1 and EN 60601-1-2, which regulate the safety of electro-medical devices - supported by the Digistat Wearables app. Vital parameters are mostly acquired automatically, on an on-going basis. They are recorded directly on the Myco 3 - which operates as a transmission gateway - and are sent to the patient’s personal health records. Digitization of the process for measuring, recording and sending vital parameters contributes to increased patient safety and optimization of the workflow of doctors and nurses. Additionally, the solution includes a cloud dashboard that will give healthcare professionals a comprehensive and detailed overview of each individual patient’s care.

As well as helping to maintain high quality care, the Digistat® Wearables solution can be used by patients in quarantine, so they can continue to receive reliable monitoring. In this way, the workload of health workers is reduced, as is contact with patients affected by Covid-19. While healthcare facilities can continue to give patients the necessary care and support provided through Special Continuity Care Units. At the end of the monitoring and treatment process, the Myco 3 device and its sensors will be removed from the treated patient, subjected to a sanitization process, and made available for use by a new patient. 

This project has been implemented with the support of K Link Srl (www.klinksolutions.it), a company that has been active for years in promoting and developing highly innovative projects, and a commercial partner of Ascom. The system was created with support from the Cloud platform and the TIM mobile network, and complies with EU legislation on the protection of personal data. 

Digital technology not only includes the digitalization of data but also the ability to support doctors and health workers in the adoption of clinical and organizational decisions. It contributes, therefore, in a concrete and fundamental way to the digitization of hospital and healthcare structures and to the development of the concept of Healthcare 2.0.
Ciro Verdoliva (engineer)
General Director of the Napoli 1 Local Health Center
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