How digital technology will personalise healthcare

Innov­a­tions in the health­care sec­tor have increased expo­nen­tially over the past few years thanks to the wide­spread use of digit­al tech­no­logy. A digit­ally con­nec­ted world like ours not only enables tech­no­lo­gic­al advances, but can also open the door to a whole new range of bene­fits that have long gone unnoticed. “Digit­al tech­no­logy is hav­ing a num­ber of pos­it­ive impacts on the health­care sec­tor,” says Étienne Min­vi­elle, CNRS research dir­ect­or and pro­fess­or of health­care man­age­ment at I³- CRG. “It enables patients to be mon­itored remotely, while increas­ing their autonomy in their care, because they can move around more eas­ily and con­tact a hos­pit­al system.”

Accord­ing to stud­ies led by the pro­fess­or, digit­al tech­no­logy improves the qual­ity of care. Through remote mon­it­or­ing, “Digit­al health is some­thing that has been devel­op­ing rap­idly in recent years,” says Alex­is Hernot, co-founder of Calmedica. “And France wants to become the lead­er in Europe.” Giv­en the bene­fits that e‑health can bring to the med­ic­al world, Alex­is Hernot is con­vinced that: “Digit­al tech­no­logy has gone from being a threat to a tre­mend­ous opportunity.”

“When it comes to digit­al tech­no­logy and tech­no­lo­gic­al innov­a­tion in health­care, the issue of organ­isa­tion is a fun­da­ment­al one,” insists Étienne Min­vi­elle. “So you have to be able to put it into its organ­isa­tion­al con­text straight away.” It was in this sense that the pro­fess­or con­duc­ted a study at the Gust­ave Roussy hos­pit­al. Fol­low­ing the devel­op­ment of a com­mu­nic­a­tion sys­tem called CAPRI, can­cer patients receiv­ing oral treat­ment could be mon­itored more eas­ily from a dis­tance. “In onco­logy, for example, patients spend more than 90% of their time out­side hos­pit­al,” he explains. “It’s import­ant to know what’s going on there, through a range of play­ers who need to be coordin­ated along the way to ensure that things go as smoothly as pos­sible for the patient.”

There are many advant­ages to this kind of mon­it­or­ing: “We can pre­vent the tox­ic effects of drugs,” adds the pro­fess­or, “by pre­scrib­ing them more effect­ively. At the same time, patients are hap­pi­er, and it has been shown that this avoids hos­pit­al vis­its in stat­ist­ic­ally sig­ni­fic­ant pro­por­tions. What’s more, when they do go to hos­pit­al, they are less likely to go to A&E. This is anoth­er key point, because in mod­ern health­care sys­tems, over­crowding in emer­gency depart­ments is a real problem.”

This type of mon­it­or­ing also makes it pos­sible to per­son­al­ise the patient’s care path­way. Rather like the sug­ges­tion algorithms used by stream­ing plat­forms, an applic­a­tion of this kind will enable carers to gain a bet­ter under­stand­ing of the patient’s life­style habits, and there­fore to bet­ter guide them in their treat­ment. “We’re com­bin­ing know­ledge of socio-eco­nom­ic determ­in­ants with know­ledge of the patient’s beha­viour,” explains Étienne Min­vi­elle. “A patient who is on their own will not receive the same care as a patient whose fam­ily is around them. As far as patient beha­viour is con­cerned, it’s import­ant to know wheth­er they are anxious, motiv­ated to take their med­ic­a­tion, or are going through a dif­fi­cult peri­od.” Étienne Minvielle’s work is still at the exper­i­ment­al stage, but the res­ults are promising.

A sim­il­ar remote mon­it­or­ing sys­tem has already been intro­duced, under the name Calmedica. “Reg­u­la­tions intro­duced by the French Nation­al Author­ity for Health require ambu­lat­ory sur­gery patients to be called the day before and the day after their oper­a­tion,” explains Alex­is Hernot. “With the cur­rent short­age of nurses, these calls, which are very time-con­sum­ing, promp­ted us to set up Calmedica.” The former Poly­tech­nique gradu­ate and his col­league came up with an auto­mated sys­tem to replace these calls. This auto­mated sys­tem, which involves send­ing text mes­sages, will com­mu­nic­ate instruc­tions to patients before the oper­a­tion and ask them about their state of health afterwards.

“Since the start of Cov­id, one prob­lem in the health sec­tor has become more acute: the short­age of care work­ers,” he says. “As a res­ult, the num­ber of vacan­cies in hos­pit­als has increased.” An auto­mated tool that com­mu­nic­ates with patients makes it easi­er to mon­it­or their care. “When you have 40 patients a day, you spend 6 to 7 hours a day con­tact­ing them,” adds Alex­is Hernot. “You’d need a full-time nurse for this simple task.”

Calmedica’s soft­ware uses decision trees to com­mu­nic­ate with patients by text mes­sage. “A sys­tem like this frees up 90% of nurses’ time,” he explains. “This time is used to improve the qual­ity of care, but also enables more patients to be cared for while redu­cing wait­ing times.” What’s more, its use has been sim­pli­fied as much as pos­sible: “The sys­tem we’ve designed is simple,” he says. “We don’t need to train patients, because we tell them: you’re going to receive text mes­sages, and if there are any ques­tions, you have to answer them. And for the carers, we tell them: you have a dash­board and if some­thing has been repor­ted, there will be a red dot on the line that cor­res­ponds to the patient.”

Pablo Andres