SWINDON, England – Swindon Primary Care Trust is implementing a telehealth monitoring service to support patients suffering from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

The service will aim to enhance the level of care that can be provided to the patients while at home.

Tunstall will supply the telemonitoring systems. According to the vendor, the systems help manage patients' conditions by enabling problems to be addressed prior to the patient's admission at a hospital. This reduces the need for excessive, repeated hospital admissions.

Swindon PCT launched a successful telehealth pilot in 2007 that has shown increased quality of life and reduced hospital admissions for COPD patients.

"Patients report that the Telehealth service has helped them develop a better understanding of their condition, and how to manage it more effectively on a day-to-day basis," said Jan Tretheway, deputy director of Service Development and Acute Services for Swindon PCT. " As a result, patients are being admitted to hospital less often, require less input from community nurses and therapy teams and have more freedom to enjoy life."

Matthew Marshall, director of health at Tunstall, said, "COPD is one of the most common respiratory diseases in the UK and represents a high proportion of health and social care expenditure, costing the NHS £818 million and 1 million inpatient days per year. "As we have witnessed in Swindon, the latest telehealth monitors are playing a key role in addressing this challenge, detecting changes in patients' conditions at an early stage to enable timely medical intervention when needed and leading to a reduction in the number of acute admissions."

Swindon PCT is planning to further extend its use of telehealth monitoring for patients with other chronic conditions such as diabetes, according to a release.