TeleClinicalCare (TCC) is featured as an UNSW Engineering impact story. Through the creation of the evidence-based remote patient monitoring platform, TCC, has enabled a new way for patients and practitioners to deliver post-discharge continuity of care.
As the head of the School of Biomedical Engineering and Director of the Institute of Health Engineering at UNSW, Prof. Lovell’s primary goal has been to address unmet patient needs through the application of innovative med-tech solutions. This aim has come to life more recently through the creation of TCC, which enables self-management, reduces unnecessary re-hospitalisations and ultimately improves patient wellbeing.
At a time when smartphones started becoming more ubiquitous, Prof. Lovell began sourcing low-cost physiological monitors such as pulse oximeters and blood pressure graphs with the idea of using the smartphone as the integrator for the data they would produce. This would form the front end of his TCC app and also deliver questionnaires and education material to patients. At the backend, the app would provide clinicians and health administrators with access to a patient clinical portal. This allowed them to view the longitudinal measurements from patients and run a health-risk stratification algorithm across all the data, revealing who was at risk of exacerbations of their conditions, and prioritise patients based on assessments of their health.
Trialled across a study of 160 cardiovascular patients, the app proved successful – showing a 50 per cent reduction in patient readmissions to hospital after six months.