Healthcare for the 21st century

The growing use of mobile phones to deliver healthcare and facilitate self-management of long-term conditions has its roots in University of Oxford research.

Around 17.5 million people in the UK and 125 million in the US have a long-term condition such as diabetes, high blood pressure, asthma, or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease which requires ongoing management over years or decades. For many of them, learning to monitor and manage their condition themselves – for example, people with diabetes testing their own blood glucose – is an important part of their healthcare.

In 2002, Lionel Tarassenko, Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Oxford, and his research team began to develop software that allowed patients to use their mobile phones to record and report their blood glucose readings. Feedback, in the form of visual displays and advice from specialist nurses able to access the patient’s web page, helped them to manage their diabetes more effectively. 

Today, ‘mHealth’ – the delivery of healthcare at a distance enabled by mobile phones – is a rapidly growing field which is increasingly being embraced worldwide. The mobile phone applications marketed by t+ Medical, a company that span out of Professor Tarassenko’s research group, have played a key role in the ‘Whole System Demonstrator’ project, a national evaluation programme for telehealth being run by the UK Department of Health. Several telecoms companies are setting up mHealth business divisions.

Researchers at Oxford’s Institute of Biomedical Engineering, of which Professor Tarassenko is now Director, and their clinical colleagues have demonstrated medical benefits associated with the use of mHealth. As well as monitoring long-term conditions, a ‘telenurse’ can, for instance, assess data from patients who have suffered a ‘mini-stroke’ and are at risk of a major stroke. Advanced software with prioritisation algorithms allows busy healthcare professionals to see immediately which patients require urgent attention, for example a call to them or their carers.

The technology is not only empowering patients to manage their conditions wherever they may be, but also helping to keep them out of hospital.

Funded by: The National Institute for Health Research.