Why rSIM is the Perfect Connectivity Solution for Healthcare Services

In these types of contemporary digital healthcare (preventative, monitoring, diagnostic and treatment) scenarios, secure and resilient connectivity solutions are essential for their efficiency and operational success and are key to ensuring patient safety. They, being a critical part of ensuring that medical professionals, care-givers, and family members have access to the latest, real-time data and are able to act accordingly and in a timely manner. 

As many healthcare providers increasingly seek to enhance patient care and streamline their operations with these systems, the demand for reliable, secure, and low-latency connectivity solutions is now becoming a paramount concern. The integration of the latest and most advanced connectivity technologies being essential for safeguarding patients, enhancing patient outcomes, and ensuring the operational efficiency targets set, are met.  

Among the most transformative recent innovations in connectivity technology is the resilient SIM card (rSIM). rSIM revolutionises the reliability and security of connectivity services for healthcare providers, and is particularly relevant to Hospital at Home schemes, virtual wards, and for embedding within medical devices. This technology stands out not only for its intrinsic reliability and trust, but also for its unique capacity to mitigate the often harmful and detrimental effects of connectivity disruptions that are highly impactful in healthcare and remote patient monitoring (RPM) settings.  

rSIM has been specifically designed to significantly enhance the reliability of mobile communications. Ensuring that critical data is transmitted without interruption, even during costly and often long-standing network outages that can last many hours. In healthcare and RPM settings, this makes rSIM a potentially life-saving necessity in environments where every second counts. 

In this blog, we will explore why rSIM is the perfect designed solution for the healthcare sector and specifically for RPM settings. 

In healthcare, the integration of technology is paramount to improving patient outcomes and streamlining many hospital and primary care operations that are already under strain owing to increased life-expectancies. Many healthcare providers are therefore increasingly relying on remote consultations and real-time data to help them make better and more informed triaging decisions and to help monitor the efficacy of ongoing treatment plans.  

In these circumstances reliable and always available connectivity is essential. rSIM facilitates this by providing assured and seamless connectivity to a range of healthcare systems, medical and care giving devices.  

Unlike traditional IoT SIM cards, which are susceptible to network interruptions and outages, the rSIM offers highly resilient and completely discrete, geo-redundant, dual-core multi-network capabilities; all on a single mobile SIM card. 

This enables any device with mobile connectivity and fitted with rSIM capability to connect to any available mobile network, and if there is failure on any part of the network in-between, to switch to a completely discrete pathway. This ensures that connectivity is seamless and in effect ‘always on’.  

What is more, the rSIM technology acts independently of the device it is connecting to the network. It’s patented technology means rSIM monitors the network performance and data throughput itself. If there is any loss of connectivity, the rSIM initiates its discrete core network switching via a completely different and geo-redundant network pathway. This is particularly crucial for those medical devices and systems that are not ‘network savvy’ that will continue to attempt to connect to a network that is unavailable or suffering an outage (and is the case for most care systems, medical devices, and wearables).  

This level of device and network redundancy is particularly crucial for healthcare applications where consistent communication can help save lives. For example, in emergency situations, pre-warnings and alerts during health monitoring, or indeed during virtual care or medical consultations where efficiency and accuracy are paramount.  

Due to its standard form and compactness, rSIM is also particularly useful for remote patient monitoring systems, or for devices that by their very nature require compact, mobile, and flexible connectivity solutions. 

This ability to maintain ‘always on’ connectivity in challenging conditions being vital for many devices such as wearable health or vital signs monitors, blood pressure devices, heart monitors, Oxygen levels, infusion devices, work phones or tablets, and many other forms of monitoring or diagnostic tools.  

rSIM, therefore, not only improves the reliability of the devices but also enhances patient safety and their trust and satisfaction with RPM services. Being able to trust that their monitoring and diagnostics equipment will continue to connect effectively at all times. 

RPM in healthcare is increasingly seen as a way of monitoring many manageable and common healthcare conditions. This is partly due to advances in technology, but also due to the increasing importance of AI in terms of enabling larger scale and more accurate data analysis and management when combined with more traditional forms of human contact and patient management. Some of the types of conditions that are deemed more appropriate for forms of RPM, Hospital at Home and Virtual Ward schemes include: 

• Diabetes  

• Hypertension 

• Heart Disease 

• Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD)  

• Asthma 

• Weight Management and Obesity 

• Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) 

• Multiple Sclerosis (MS) 

• Some Forms of Mental Health Issues 

• Some Neurological Disorders 

Resilient connectivity is therefore crucial in healthcare as RPM has the potential to significantly impact and improve healthcare services for many types of patients. This providing a wide range of benefits for patients, care givers and the resource utilisation of healthcare providers in some important ways:  

• Reduced Hospital Readmissions: RPM allows healthcare providers to monitor patients’ conditions in real-time, helping to identify potential health issues before they escalate. By proactively managing chronic conditions that are deemed manageable, hospitals can help reduce the rate of avoidable readmissions through earlier interventions, which is a major cost driver in healthcare.  

• Lower Emergency Room or A&E Visits: With continuous monitoring, patients can avoid unnecessary emergency visits to their hospital. RPM enabling timely interventions, which can prevent acute complications and the need for more urgent care, resulting in substantial cost and resource savings for both patients and for many healthcare systems that are already under strain. 

• Real-Time Analytics and Timely Decision Making: With real-time data analytics, healthcare providers can access up-to-date patient information, enabling faster and more informed decision-making. This immediacy is critical in emergency situations, where timely interventions can help save lives and the loss of connection can increase the concern or worry of care providers and family providing greater strain on healthcare resources. 

• Increased Resource Efficiency in Care Delivery: RPM can help streamline the healthcare delivery processes. Providers being more able to manage multiple patients simultaneously, reducing the time and resources needed for in-person visits. This efficiency can act to lower the strain on key primary and secondary healthcare resources and lead to lower operational costs for healthcare facilities. 

• Improved Chronic Disease Management: Chronic diseases such as COPD, Diabetes, and Heart Conditions, often require ongoing management. RPM helps patients adhere to treatment their plans, track their vital signs, and helps them to invest in the process and make lifestyle adjustments. Important as better management of these conditions in people’s everyday and home lives can lead to fewer complications and lower overall treatment costs moving forward. 

• Enhanced Patient Engagement: RPM is key in encouraging those patients under virtual care to take an active role in their healthcare. Fully engaged patients being more likely to follow their treatment plans and make healthier lifestyle choices, which can lead to better health outcomes for them and reduced healthcare visits, treatments, and costs over time. 

• A Preventive Care Focus: By facilitating regular monitoring and check-ins, RPM promotes a preventive care model. Early detection of issues can lead to interventions that are less costly than treating advanced diseases. Thereby reducing overall healthcare expenditure by avoiding more expensive treatments and the requirement for hospital stays.  

• Personalised Care Plans: Analysing real-time data also allows for a more personalised approach to patient care. Providers are more able to tailor and adjust treatments based on current health metrics and individual patient needs. 

• Constant Care and Cost-Effective Data Collection: RPM utilises connected technologies to gather patient data efficiently, reducing the need for frequent in-person visits, but increasingly the visibility of the status of the patient. This means that care givers are more able to prioritise their schedule. This not only saves patients time and travel costs but also lowers general administrative costs for the healthcare provider. 

• Resource Allocation Optimisation: With RPM, healthcare providers can allocate resources more effectively. By identifying patients who require immediate attention and those who can be monitored remotely, providers can optimise staffing and reduce costs or less effective visits. 

• Reduced Travel Costs and Burden: For patients living in rural or underserved areas, RPM eliminates the need for frequent travel to healthcare facilities, which can be costly, time-consuming, and disruptive for them. This greater level of accessibility to services can improve overall patient satisfaction while lowering costs and the inconvenience associated with transportation. This being especially the case for the elderly, vulnerable (or very young children) who may or will be reliant on the help of others to reach a healthcare facility. For example, virtual wards have proven particularly popular for monitoring children with respiratory conditions. 

• Better Communication and Collaboration: Real-time data sharing fosters better communication among healthcare teams. When all providers have access to the same up-to-date information, collaboration improves, leading to cohesive and coordinated patient care. 

• Population Health Management: By aggregating and analysing data from various sources, healthcare organisations can identify trends and patterns within specific populations. This insight allows for targeted interventions, preventive care strategies, and better management of chronic diseases. 

• Enhanced Research and Development: Real-time data analytics supports clinical research by providing researchers with immediate access to patient data, treatment outcomes, and responses. This accelerates the development of new therapies and improves the understanding of disease processes. 

• Informed Policy Making: Health organisations can utilise real-time data analytics to inform policy decisions and improve healthcare systems overall. Data-driven insights help in formulating effective public health strategies and resource allocation. 

In the evolving landscape of healthcare services and technologies, the need for reliable, secure, and cost-effective solutions is more critical than ever. rSIM stands out as the perfect solution for healthcare devices, services, and medical device manufacturers, offering enhanced connectivity, improved security, cost savings, and the flexibility to adapt to changing market demands. As the healthcare industry continues to embrace digital transformation, rSIM will undoubtedly play a pivotal role in shaping the future of the connectivity of medical technology. 

rSIM therefore represents a significant advancement for healthcare providers, virtual wards, and medical devices. By ensuring reliable, uninterrupted connectivity, rSIM empowers healthcare professionals to deliver timely and efficient care, leading to better patient outcomes, improved operational efficiencies and more successful future implementations of RPM, ‘Hospital at Home’ and ‘Virtual Ward’ schemes.  

As the Medical Internet of Things (MIoT) also continues to expand use cases applications within healthcare, rSIM will play a crucial role in facilitating this technological integration. Medical devices pre-equipped with rSIM can reliable and securely connect to healthcare platforms, enabling secure data sharing between devices, healthcare providers, and patients. This interoperability improves patient monitoring, enhances real-time data analytics capabilities, and drives better health outcomes for all. 

Unreliable connectivity and mobile network outages can have a profound impact on patient and medical professional’s experiences of RPM, Hospital at Home and virtual ward schemes. Without reliable connectivity, patients are likely to feel isolated and anxious, unable to communicate with their healthcare providers. Family members may also worry, and care givers will need to attempt to contact the patient, family members, or check-in to ensure everything is OK. 

Mobile network outages are more frequent than many people realise and can occur for a variety of reasons. It is important to remember that mobile networks are dynamic and are affected by a variety of external forces. This makes the inbuilt redundancy and resilience of rSIM particularly important for healthcare scenarios. Some of the most common causes of outages and network problems include: 

• Technical and Hardware Failures 

• Software Issues 

• Network Congestion 

• Maintenance and Upgrades 

• Power Outages 

• Natural Disasters or Extreme Weather 

• Cyberattacks 

• Environmental Factors 

• Human Error 

• Supply Chain Issues or delays in replacement network equipment.