Virtual Care & Systems Innovation

Towards the end of 2020, with Australia’s first COVID wave on the decline, St Vincent’s Health Network Sydney began investigating how we could add to our efforts to keep both our clinicians and patients safe from a highly infectious and dangerous disease, while still providing exceptional care.

We wanted to take further advantage of the rapid advances in technology developing globally, along with the international trend toward providing more hospital services in the community, outside traditional ‘bricks and mortar’ settings, a movement that had only increased in speed since the beginning of the pandemic.

In response, we embarked upon a new model of service delivery: stvincent’s@home.

Much like the founders of St Vincent’s—the Sisters of Charity—who walked the streets to provide care to those in need, stvincent’s@home sees more of our services delivered in the community and where people live.

It’s designed to complement the hospital’s traditional models of care while boosting its capacity to treat more people in an accessible and flexible way, without the limitations posed by distance for regional and remote patients.

The challenge for us in the Health Network’s Digital Innovations team, was designing a system that supported this expansion of virtual care, and provided a reliable, functional, and user-friendly service.

An initial challenge we faced was the embryonic nature of existing virtual care solutions and the limited number of large scale, future-proof initiatives that could be used as models for success.

We wanted to utilize developments in cloud computing, wearables, and mobile devices, and set ourselves up for a future that involved artificial intelligence, interoperability, and scalability. An iterative approach was needed to manage the large number of unknown variables. We also required an agile and flexible partner to help us deliver on the concept. After an extensive market investigation and engagement process, we settled on a local Sydney start-up, CareMonitor. We felt they had the right product roadmap, personnel, and collaborative tools to help bring this concept to fruition.

“An initial challenge we faced was the embryonic nature of existing virtual care solutions and the limited number of large scale, future-proof initiatives that could be used as models for success.”

So, when COVID’s Delta-variant outbreak arrived during mid-2021, thanks to our earlier work, we both had the internal support in place to underpin stvincent’s@home – which had moved ahead rapidly and was already delivering a 30-bed virtual ward – as well as the support of CareMonitor to rapidly iterate and deliver new features and functionalities.

A key learning during this process was the need for a highly collaborative and fluid structure to accommodate the efforts of so many interconnected divisions such as Technology, Medical, Nursing, Allied Health, Finance, Legal and Public Affairs. In order to succeed, we needed all stakeholders on board, wanting to be a part of our virtual care story and its next chapters.

As part of our approach to managing the project’s unknowns, we looked for a way to easily build and add content in a ‘low code’ environment. Over time, we worked closely with clinicians to develop a suite of digital tools, replacing a paper-based system of care.

Throughout it all, we kept our eyes on the largest piece of this project: the creation of patient-centric results. For a long time, healthcare technical solutions have been clinically focused, relying heavily on tools and devices aimed at helping clinicians and administrators store and retrieve information.

In this new emerging era, patients now have the ability to contact clinicians at any time, book appointments when it suits them, and control the flow of information shared from their own devices and applications. This will only become more common as the era of consumer health devices and apps continues to develop.

Let me give you an example of how our efforts supported stvincent’s@home.

One of our patients, Jasmin Young, who contracted COVID, was admitted to our virtual COVID ward. From the comfort of her home, she could download our stvincent’s@home app, connect it to her smartwatch, and share her vital signs. Jasmin could also chat in real-time via a messaging app with our clinicians about her ongoing health.

Our clinicians, some of whom were also working from home, could view Jasmin’s vital signs, and escalate any medical attention she needed. This entire interaction was digitally enabled, and happened outside of the hospital walls. It’s a perfect example of digital pathways intertwining with traditional care.

We believe this is a big step within the healthcare industry, and we are only at the very beginning of seeing applications, solutions, and devices capturing the full value of digitally enabled care. We are excited to be at the forefront of this monumental change, and to play our part in enabling our patients to access the many services and features stvincent’s@homeoffers.