Telemonitoring in the Covid-19 Era: The Tuscany Region Experience

Abstract

Covid-19 has brought many difficulties in the management of infected and high-risk patients. Telemedicine platforms can really help in this situation, since they allow remotely monitoring Covid-19 patients, reducing the risk for the doctors, without decreasing the efficiency of the therapies and while alleviating patients’ mental issues. In this paper, we present the entire architecture and the experience of using the Tel.Te.Covid19 telemedicine platform. Projected for the treatment of chronic diseases, it has been technologically updated for the management of Covid-19 patients with the support of a group of doctors in the territory when the pandemic arrived, introducing new sensors and functionalities (e.g., the familiar use and video calls). In Tuscany (Central Italy), during the first wave of outbreak, a model for enrolling patients was created and tested. Because of the positive results, the latter has been then adopted in the second current wave. The Tel.Te.Covid19 platform has been used by 40 among general practitioners and doctors of continuity care and about 180 symptomatic patients since March 2020. Both patients and doctors have good opinion of the platform, and no hospitalisations or deaths occurred for the monitored patients, reducing also the impact on the National Healthcare System.

A Case Study of Using Telehealth in a Rural Healthcare Facility to Expand Services and Protect the Health and Safety of Patients and Staff

“…Approximately 95% of health centers reported that such visits were conducted during the pandemic [8]. A recent study conducted by Panicacci et al (2021) presented a case of existing telemedicine system that was updated with new features to monitor and provide care to high risk COVID patients in their homes. This approach was extremely successful and led to a reduction in (or no) hospitalization, deaths, and positive feedback from patients and practitioners [9].…”

Telehealth at scale can improve chronic disease management in the community during a pandemic: An experience at the time of COVID-19

“…In Italy, in the course of the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, available telehealth solutions have been used to track and promptly detect potentially infected individuals [ 14 , 15 ] and monitor patients with any critical chronic condition (including heart failure, diabetes, oncological disease, skin disease, neurological or psychiatric disease, immunological disease) restrained at home [ 16 – 22 ]. However, preliminary reports suggest that the Country was mostly unprepared to implement existing telehealth solutions for this purpose [ 11 , 23 – 26 ].…”

Needs and Perceptions of Patients With Dystonia During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Qualitative Framework Analysis of Survey Responses From Italy

“…In this regard, the state of telemedicine before the outbreak of COVID-19 needs mention. Until then, telehealth initiatives were organized locally within a disease-specific program ( 35 , 36 ) due to several issues, such as the lack of homogenous infrastructures and application standards or inadequate reimbursement for telemedicine services ( 35 , 37 ). So, without a nationwide telehealth system, the pre-existing limited telemedicine infrastructure was deployed during the first wave of the pandemic ( 36 ), in addition to the conventional phone calls or emails to the patients.…”