Miraculously, despite many close calls, I had managed to dodge COVID over the past two years… until a month ago! After an outing with friends, the tell-tale signs of a cough were present and with a bright red line on a Rapid Antigen Test (RAT) my illness was confirmed.
I happened to be working on a project implementing Alcidion’s ‘Miya Care’ virtual care app at the time which luckily meant I had quick access to a Pulse Oximeter, Thermometer and Blood Pressure Cuff that were ready to go for an unfortunate sick individual (me). The Miya Care app allows patients to complete surveys and assessments virtually as well as document their observations through a variety of personal medical devices from their phone. This turn of events led me to use myself as a “guinea pig” and jump right into the patient experience of Miya Care.
Connecting the medical devices to my phone was quick and easy, all three devices connect seamlessly via Bluetooth with setup taking no time at all.
Miya Care has a streamlined and straight forward user interface (UI), the home screen displays a list of my tasks for the day that I can jump to with one tap. I wanted to start recording my vitals, so I decided to complete an observations questionnaire. The questionnaire stepped me through a variety of questions and educational screens. On reaching an observations page, I put on my pulse oximeter and my oxygen saturation (spO2) and pulse rate were instantly sent to Miya Care, popping up on my screen in real time. Luckily COVID was kind to me and I wasn’t performing too poorly.
After completing my observation survey, my results were displayed instantaneously on the Miya Precision clinical dashboard in a variety of formats. It was comforting to know in a real patient care scenario, a team of clinicians would be provided real time data from their patients quickly which was presented in a clear manner to allow real-time monitoring and ready identification of patient deterioration.
While Miya Care supports a range of other functions, such as Patient Education sheets, call scheduling and a variety of tasks a patient can undertake, I focussed on one of the core aspects of the app in sending real-time observations for monitoring. Despite my blistering headache, never ending cough and less than sunny disposition, the entire experience was quick and easy.
Example Observations from a Miya Precision Clinical Dashboard
I feel it is very important when working in digital healthcare to ensure that you view the experience of any healthcare system through the lens of a patient to understand both the clinical and patient side of a presentation. This is even more important in Virtual Care where the patient is likely to have direct involvement in their care.
As someone who hasn’t had to personally use medical devices before, there was an empowering aspect of taking a more direct role in my own care and personally experiencing the benefits of patient centred care first-hand. Virtual Healthcare Teams are managing larger and larger cohorts of patients. Miya Care moves the documentation and administration aspects of virtual teams into the hands of the patient and this allows clinicians to focus more on direct patient care and enhance the available monitoring capabilities of virtual care.
This experience has given me a huge boost of excitement in the advancement of virtual care and the great benefits that applications such as Miya Care can bring to the healthcare needs of a growing population who have an expectation of playing an active role in their healthcare. I look forward to continuing my work with Miya Care and sharing the potential with healthcare providers and patients.
James Faithfull is an Implementation Consultant at Alcidion