Connected Health at Fresenius Medical Care

Fresenius Medical Care’s connected health platforms are designed around patient needs — to support care in the most proactive and efficient manner possible. These platforms empower patients and clinical staff through a digital ecosystem enabling connections among patients, healthcare professionals, medical devices, technical operations, and customer service. Keeping patients and care teams connected, with access to recent treatment data, is vital in order to continuously improve medical outcomes, user experience, and effectiveness of care.

The COVID-19 pandemic advanced an era in which nearly every activity of life went digital. In healthcare, the increased availability of new technologies has allowed for better delivery of quality of care at lower costs, creating value for all stakeholders involved. Digital transformation has helped healthcare providers streamline operations to understand patient needs and deliver required services. Technological devices provide vast amounts of data that can be analyzed to facilitate real-time decisions for more personalized medical care. With the rise of technological innovations, patients are becoming active decision makers in their medical care process and healthcare operations and processes are improved.

In the Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA), Asia Pacific (AP), and Latin America (LA) regions, Fresenius Medical Care has three main elements that form the connected health platform in over 20 countries: the well-established EuCliD clinical quality data warehouse, the PD Patient Monitoring solution, and the MyCompanion patient app. In the near future, all elements of the digital ecosystem in EMEA, AP, LA will be summarized under the umbrella brand theHub.

EUCLID CLINICAL QUALITY DATA WAREHOUSE

In the EMEA region, Fresenius Medical Care implemented EuCliD®, a central digital warehouse for clinical data across the company’s NephroCare network of dialysis clinics.1 EuCliD allows data management processes to be standardized into a consolidated and unified source of evidence while reducing the costs for evidence generation.2

EuCliD availability in EMEA clinics was a key factor for the development of efficient and effective continuous quality improvement (CQI) programs. The clinical quality improvements generated by combining digital transformation, new medical governance strategies (medical patient review, or MPR), and clinical target achievement are associated with better quality of life among dialysis patients.3 Moreover, a large historical cohort study showed that the CQI-MPR programs, leveraged by digital transformation, enhanced the intermediate clinical endpoints and patient rate of survival in Fresenius Medical Care NephroCare clinics in the EMEA region.4

THE PD MONITORING SOLUTION

The PD Patient Monitoring Solution is a cloud-based solution for home dialysis designed to keep patients connected to their care teams, with better access to recent treatment data. By making this data more easily accessible to clinicians, care teams can resolve treatment issues earlier and reduce unnecessary hospitalizations. The platform enhances clinical workflows with advanced therapy programs that are designed to improve patient outcomes and nurse productivity. Using a connected health platform such as the PD Patient Monitoring Solution can reduce hospitalizations and minimize technique failure.5 Evidence also suggests that connected health is associated with a 15 percent reduction in patient dropout and increased longevity on peritoneal dialysis (PD) by 3.5 months (Figure 1).6

FIGURE 1  |  The PD Patient Monitoring Solution HCPs portal

FIGURE 2  |  The PD Patient Monitoring Solution ecosystem ensures communication between patients and healthcare professionals

The PD Patient Monitoring Solution is a cloud-based digital ecosystem. With a simple Internet connection, users can store and access their data online in a fast, easy, and safe way. HCPs have a single place to manage all PD patients, track progress, and monitor prescribed therapies: the PD Patient Monitoring Solution HCPs portal. The PD Patient Monitoring Solution also relies on hardware devices — the Cycler, the Card Reader, and the Gateway — that enable bidirectional connectivity between the Cycler at home and The PD Patient Monitoring Solution HCPs portal in the clinic. Patients are empowered to track their daily treatment data and vitals to self-manage their chronic kidney disease using the PD Health Tracking App, which is also connected to the cloud via Wi-Fi, enabling communication between patients and healthcare professionals.

The PD Patient Monitoring Solution is an innovative, paperless, digital solution that provides access to detailed, organized patient data in a timely manner. It allows healthcare professionals to focus on delivery of high-quality care for patients who choose home-based treatment.

MYCOMPANION APPLICATION

The myCompanion app is Fresenius Medical Care’s health solution for in-center hemodialysis patients. It allows patients to access their treatment data, track values of critical lab results, and access medication information. The app provides patients with additional information about their condition, treatment plan, and treatment results, and facilitates more informed discussions with their healthcare team. myCompanion empowers individuals living with kidney disease to take a more active role in their disease management. The app also provides a holistic learning curriculum that includes engaging content to help patients learn about kidney disease (Figure 3). 

FIGURE 3  |  myCompanion application

Ultimately, improved data sharing will provide healthcare professionals with constant updates on the health of their patients, even before the next contact occurs. This establishes and supports a trusting, collaborative relationship between patients and their care team.

Meet The Experts

References

1. Steil H, Amato C, Carioni C, et al. EuCliD—a medical registry. Methods Inf Med 2004;43(1):83-8. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15026844/. 
2. Turley CB, Obeid J, Larsen R, et al. Leveraging a statewide clinical data warehouse to expand boundaries of the learning health system. EGEMS (Wash DC) 2016;4(1):1245. doi:10.13063/2327-9214.1245.
3. Neri L, Ponce P, Matias N, et al. Clinical target achievement is associated with better quality of life among dialysis patients: results from a continuous quality improvement program in a Portuguese healthcare network. Qual Life Res 2020;29(10):2705-14. doi: 10.1007/s11136-020-02543-0. 
4. Garbelli M, Titapiccolo JI , Bellocchio F, Stuard S, et al. Prolonged patient survival after implementation of a continuous quality improvement programme empowered by digital transformation in a large dialysis network. Nephrol Dial Transplant 2021;gfab160. doi: 10.1093/ndt/gfab160. 
5. Chaudhuri S, Han H, Muchiutti C, et al. Remote treatment monitoring on hospitalization and technique failure rates in peritoneal dialysis patients. Kidney360 2020 March;1(3):191-202. https://doi.org/10.34067/KID.0000302019. 
6. Giles H, Ficociello LH, Li Y, et al. Remote patient monitoring and longevity on peritoneal dialysis. Abstract. Peritoneal Dialysis International 2019 March;39:S4.