Hospitals can be overburdened with large numbers of patients with severe infectious conditions during infectious disease outbreaks. Such outbreaks or epidemics put tremendous pressure on the admission capacity of care facilities in the concerned region, negatively affecting the elective program within these facilities. Such situations have been observed during the recent waves of the coronavirus disease pandemic. Owing to the imminent threat of a “tripledemic” by new variants of the coronavirus disease (such as the new Omicron XBB.1.16 strain), influenza, and respiratory syncytial virus during future winter seasons, healthcare agencies should take decisive steps to safeguard hospitals' surge capacity while continuing to provide optimal and safe care to a potentially large number of patients in their trusted home environment. Preparedness of health systems for infectious diseases will require dynamic interaction between a continuous assessment of region-wide available hospital capacity and programs for intensive home treatment of patients who can spread the disease. In this viewpoint, we describe an innovative, dynamic coupling system between hospital surge capacity and cascading activation of a nationwide system for remote patient monitoring. This approach was developed using the multi-criteria decision analysis methodology, considering previously published real-life experiences on remote patient monitoring.

UNSTRUCTURED Hospitals can be overburdened with patients suffering from severe infectious conditions during infectious disease outbreaks. Such outbreaks or epidemics put tremendous pressure on the admission capacity of care facilities in the concerned region, and negatively impact the elective program within these facilities. Such situations have been observed during the recent waves of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 pandemic. Due to the imminent threat of a twindemic by new variant of coronavirus disease 19 and influenza during the upcoming winter season, healthcare agencies should take decisive steps to safeguard hospitals’ surge capacity while continuing to provide optimal and safe care to potentially large number of patients in their familiar home environment. Preparedness of health systems for infectious diseases would require a dynamic interaction between the continuous assessment of region-wide available hospital capacity and programs of intensive home treatment of infectious patients. In this viewpoint we describe an innovative dynamic coupling system between hospital surge capacity and a cascading activation of a nation-wide system for remote patient monitoring.