Inside the boom in remote patient monitoring

The last time we caught up with Pillsy co-founders Jeff LeBrun and Chuks Onwuneme, three years ago, they were focused on their flagship product, a smart pill bottle that sounds an alarm if people forget to take their pills.

But that was just one example of the broader trend of remote patient monitoring -- technology that helps medical professionals keep tabs on the status of patients at home, day in and day out, not just during periodic visits to the doctor’s office. Even before COVID-19 led to a boom in telehealth, LeBrun says, the need for better remote patient monitoring was becoming clear to Medicare officials, due to an aging population and a limited supply of health care workers.

"There's been over a decade of research showing that remote patient monitoring has led to improved health outcomes and reduced costs," LeBrun says. "With a system that's already stretched thin, they knew that they needed to use more technology to try to handle this coming load of care that they would need to provide over the next 10 years. And so I think we're really just at the tip of the iceberg. Certainly what we're seeing now is accelerating that approach."

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