Introduction: Telemedicine is believed to be helpful in managing patients suffering from chronic diseases, in particular elderly patients with numerous accompanying conditions. This was the basis for the “GERIATRICS and e-Technology (GER-e-TEC) study”, which was an experiment involving the use of the smart MyPredi™ e-platform to automatically detect the exacerbation of geriatric syndromes. Methods: The MyPredi™ platform is connected to a medical analysis system that receives physiological data from medical sensors in real time and analyzes this data to generate (when necessary) alerts. These alerts are issued in the event that the health of a patient deteriorates due to an exacerbation of their chronic diseases. An experiment was conducted between 24 September 2019 and 24 November 2019 to test this alert system. During this time, the platform was used on patients being monitored in an internal medicine unit at the University Hospital of Strasbourg. The alerts were compiled and analyzed in terms of sensitivity, specificity, and positive and negative predictive values with respect to clinical data. The results of the experiment are provided below. Results: A total of 36 patients were monitored remotely, 21 of whom were male. The mean age of the patients was 81.4 years. The patients used the telemedicine solution for an average of 22.1 days. The telemedicine solution took a total of 147,703 measurements while monitoring the geriatric risks of the entire patient group. An average of 226 measurements were taken per patient per day. The telemedicine solution generated a total of 1611 alerts while assessing the geriatric risks of the entire patient group. For each geriatric risk, an average of 45 alerts were emitted per patient, with 16 of these alerts classified as “low”, 12 classified as “medium”, and 20 classified as “critical”. In terms of sensitivity, the results were 100% for all geriatric risks and extremely satisfactory in terms of positive and negative predictive values. In terms of survival analysis, the number of alerts had an impact on the duration of hospitalization due to decompensated heart failure, a deterioration in the general condition, and other reasons. Conclusion: The MyPredi™ telemedicine system allows the generation of automatic, non-intrusive alerts when the health of a patient deteriorates due to risks associated with geriatric syndromes.
Very few frailty scales are used by general practitioners as they are time consuming and cumbersome. We designed a new scale for the rapid detection of frailty. Methods: We developed a frailty screening tool for use in primary care, referred to as the Zulfiqar Frailty Scale (ZFS). This scale was tested in a general practitioner’s office for six months in Plancoët, France. Only patients over 75 years of age with Activities of Daily Living (ADL) ≥4 were included. The objective of this research was to validate the scale, evaluate its performance, and compare this screening tool with other scales such as the Fried Scale, the Gerontopole Frailty Screening Tool (GFST), the modified Short Emergency Geriatric Assessment (mSEGA) Grid A, and the Comprehensive Geriatric Assessment (CGA). Results: A total of 102 patients were included, with a mean age of 82.65 ± 4.79; 55 were women and 47 were men. The percentage of frail subjects was 63.7% in our scale, 67.7% in the mSEGA grid A, 75.5% in the GFST, and 60.8% for the Fried criteria. After a comprehensive geriatric assessment, frailty syndrome was found in 57 patients (55.9%). In general, both scales showed solid performance, and differences between them in the sample were minimal. As the CGA showed a prevalence of frailty of 55.9%, a similar prevalence threshold for the ZFS (i.e., 64% at the threshold ≥3 could be assessed). The completion time for our scale was less than two minutes, and staff required no training beforehand. Its sensitivity was 83.9%, and its specificity was 67.5%. Its positive predictive value was 80%, and its negative predictive value was 73%. The Pearson correlations between the geriatric scores were all strong and roughly equivalent to each other. Conclusions: Our frailty screening scale is simple, relevant, and rapid (taking less than two minutes).
Very few frailty scales are used by general practitioners, as they are time consuming and cumbersome. We developed a frailty screening tool for use in primary care, referred to as the Zulfiqar Frailty Scale (ZFS). This scale was tested in multiple general practitioners’ offices in France, and these studies were published. In this paper, we offer a summary of these results.
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