As more physicians recognize the heart conditions that can be managed from home, telehealth's role in the cardiology space will continue to grow, says Christopher Parker, PharmD, executive director at Centralized Healthcare Solutions, the University of Iowa College of Pharmacy's telehealth company. He recently joined the Becker's Healthcare cardiology podcast to discuss telehealth's evolving role in managing cardiovascular conditions.
Here is an excerpt from the podcast. Click here to download the full episode.
Question: How are you thinking about the growth of telehealth in decreasing cardiovascular risk?
Editor's note: This response was lightly edited for length and clarity.
Christopher Parker: I think first of all is recognizing that not all health conditions, specifically cardiovascular-related health conditions, need to be managed in person. Many of these conditions — whether it's hypertension, diabetes, heart failure — can be done remotely over the phone with patients. The advent of these home monitoring devices have really been able to allow teams like ours to look at proper blood pressure technique, home blood pressure monitoring and glucose monitoring, and we've recognized that patients have the ability to do that. It tends to be an older population, but many of these patients have the capacity to use these devices and report back.
Something that we're working on right now is using a texting platform where we send text alerts to patients. We can set it up very tailored to the specific situation and ask them to take a home blood pressure. They text it right back to us, and that gives us real-time data as to how to manage that disease. We started doing a bit of the same with diabetes and getting home blood sugar monitoring, and for patients with heart failure who were doing daily weights to adjust diarrhetic dosing based on symptoms. So, be aware that this can be managed remotely and that we don't have to see these patients face to face — just to come to that realization of that as an effective way to provide care.