UC Davis Health is turning to a digital health solution from Propeller Health to monitor treatment for high-risk patients with asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).
UC Davis Health will provide the Propeller program – including sensors, mobile app, web portal, and personalized support – to eligible patients, with eventual expansion to patients in other UC locations and UC affiliates. The sensors attach to a patient’s inhaler to capture signals that record events, such as medication usage or respiration. This data will be transmitted directly to UC Davis Health’s Epic electronic health record (EHR) system to support patient enrollment and remote patient monitoring via single sign-on.
“Digital health devices and platforms are helping improve care for patients with chronic conditions, like COPD, by providing clinicians a more expansive view of our patient’s disease management,” said Brooks Kuhn, M.D., assistant professor of medicine and co-director of the Comprehensive COPD Clinic, in a statement. “This collaboration will help us improve the clinical outcomes of our COPD patients by identifying the need for interventions early so we can avoid serious exacerbations, preserve their lung function and improve their quality of life.”
UC Davis Health said that through the EHR system integration, clinicians will be able to track a patient’s day-to-day utilization of their inhalers, allowing them to monitor the use of “everyday medications” that keep the lungs optimally functioning as well as the rescue medication use, which is used when the patient is short of breath and needing more help.
“The rescue use will be key in alerting clinicians that the patient may be experiencing early signs of a COPD exacerbation,” explained Krystal Craddock, clinical operations manager for respiratory care, in a statement. “We will then be able to reach out to these patients and treat them early, hopefully avoiding unnecessary emergency room visits or hospitalizations.”
“There are so many patients in our community that could benefit from a program like this and improve their clinical outcomes,” Kuhn added. “I appreciate all the hard work of our UC Davis information technology team, who helped integrate the Propeller platform with our EHR system so we can streamline workflows and efficiently put real-time data, alerts, and messaging in front of our clinicians.”
The UC Davis Health Operations Center of Excellence is a partnership between Innovation Technology and Clinical Operations to design, plan, execute, and evaluate large-scale enterprise-wide digital transformation through digital monitoring, virtual care, and AI automation.
In 2022, the Comprehensive COPD Clinic created the first remote patient monitoring program in the Sacramento region for high-risk patients with COPD. “We are committed to advancing digital and data-driven healthcare models of care to continue to provide exceptional patient care and experiences,” said Kuhn. “Our collaboration with Propeller Health will help us empower our COPD patients with health technology tools to help remove barriers to care, emphasize preventive care, and reduce hospital readmissions.”
San Diego-based ResMed, a provider of cloud-connected medical devices and out-of-hospital software-as-a-service solutions, acquired Propeller Health in 2018.
