The TELA mHealth System
About The TELA mHealth System
TELA mHealth System is an alternative mobile health (mHealth) application to the current screening and health surveillance programme applied at local point of care.
At the Point of Care, the TELA mHealth System utilizes a portable kit of approved digital devices including Smartphone that captures Vital Health signs using an inbuilt Digital Thermometer, Blood Pressure monitor and a Pulse reader and Oximeter. The same smart phone is utilized for scanning RDT Kits and posting results to responsible parties for surveillance. This creates a national health surveillance and alerting services platform.
The TELA mHealth solution can be used by non-medical personnel hence it can be used at school, parish or home level to screen and monitor prevalence of malaria, HIV, TB, Covid19 and other diseases.
TELA mHealth system is progressively being developed to server as the source health client system for mass groups that need to record real time health monitoring information on major infectious diseases and other outbreaks and follow up with rapid response services. This implies that the community can operate a low cost decision support tool for planning and evaluation of health responses or interact with the Ministry of Health with confidence.
How the TELA mHealth System works
TELA mHealth is centered on the first point of meeting the health seeking person and assumes that the handler of the TELA health Kit operates a Point of Care kit to capture and screen the person for Vital signs then add the RDT related data inputs. As a portable kit, it is possible to use it in place and feed data to the central system since it is linked (via Bluetooth or WiFi) with a smartphone as the information analysis tool and transmission unit. It is important to that the user is applying the approved model digital thermometer, blood Pressure monitor, a pulse reader, oximeter tools and RDT strips.
The figure below shows how the system works in a simple workflow and in compliance to the WHO protocols for Clinical Progression Scale measure of point of care testing and diagnostic records.
Planet Systems drive for digital health and advances at the Point of Care
Our digital health innovation programme focuses on remote Patient Monitoring Platforms (RPM) and simplified Point of Care kits. Remote Patient Monitoring platforms are used by healthcare providers and caregivers to gather physiological data from patients outside of traditional healthcare settings, e.g., in assisted living communities, elderly care follow up or home based care programmes. The Tela mHealth kit can perform direct data collection from virtually any smart medical sensor via any hub or iOS/Android smartphone, wirelessly sync it to practically any cloud or server, and export data to a customised caregiver portals, surveillance system or EHR/EMR systems via a well defined API.
The TELA mHealth RPM Platform is a flexible and customizable software solution bases on open source and blends in commercial grade sensors to tightly interact with smartphones and high availability hosting platforms. The open source base ensures we stay platform agnostic and rapidly deploy a custom solution in a matter of days, integrate with other software systems (including billing) or port Apps to any OS.
Lessons learnt from past interventions show that limitations of POCT screening are progressively getting resolved. Known limitations include the timing of tests, performing specific steps in set order, operator incompetence, non-adherence to test procedures, use reagents and equipment – all of which are now managed with compact mobile test kits. The digital features and inbuilt quality checks saves the caregiver pre-analytical errors, time and helps avoid sample collection losses or missed cases results.
Efficient Point-of-care testing (POCT) enables more rapid clinical decision making in the initial process of diagnosis, (rule-in or rule-out), treatment choice and monitoring, and prognosis, as well as savings on resource utilization. Nevertheless, POCT tools will not replace routine tests in the clinical laboratory as has been recommended by the MoH.