Remote monitoring for chronic care and addiction management

Remote monitoring technologies are helping to improve the health of patients in Scotland living with drug addiction and chronic illness.

This is particularly important given the growing demand for health services. Addiction to drugs, especially opioids, continues to have debilitating effects on individuals and society, and this trend is expected to continue. GlobalData predicts that, based on current levels, an additional 2.49 million people worldwide will be diagnosed with opioid addiction by 2027, including an increase of more than 298,000 in the UK alone.

Aside from the serious health consequences of drug addiction, studies have confirmed a direct link between regular opioid use and the development of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

However, managing addiction and related health problems is becoming increasingly costly and inefficient for health services under increasing pressure on resources and budgets.

For example, in England, nine in 1,000 people were admitted to hospital with conditions sensitive to ambulatory care (ACS) in 2023-24, according to the Office for National Statistics. In the same period, 22 people out of every 1,000 were admitted with urgent care conditions (UCS).

ACS and UCS conditions are considered treatable at home or in the community, with hospital admission only as a last resort. However, the higher rate of ACS and UCS conditions admitted to the hospital is a cause for concern. This is especially true for people living with drug addictions, who can be prone to overdoses, as well as additional unpredictable health conditions like COPD.

As a leading health technology research centre, Scotland is becoming a key developer of remote control devices that can prevent unnecessary hospital admissions and reduce demand on health services. When integrated with AI and the Internet of Things, these devices can model patient health and signal the need for early interventions, helping to deliver treatments at critical moments.

The immense potential of remote monitoring in healthcare

The technology offers considerable advantages for healthcare delivery, especially with remote monitoring capabilities.

According to GlobalData’s Medical Equipment Market Database, the global patient monitoring market is worth an estimated $18.25 billion in 2024. By 2033, it will rise to $23.9 billion. Scotland has all the capabilities to secure a decent share of this market, as evidenced by the growth of specialist remote monitoring companies in the country.

“Remote monitoring has the potential to revolutionize healthcare,” says Craig Turpie, co-founder and chief operating officer of Edinburgh-based Lenus Health. “It should be able to improve patient engagement with their care and allow interventions to be made that keep them out of the hospital. I think it will provide a more proactive and preventative approach to health care.”

Treatment of patients with acute COPD is often highly reactive, with patients receiving treatment once their condition is severe enough to require hospital care. Remote monitoring, along with risk stratification, offers the opportunity for more personalized care while freeing up capacity within healthcare systems.

Advances in ML also mean that large amounts of data collected through remote monitoring, including from wearable devices, can be analyzed more effectively than ever before.

“We connect patient-generated data with electronic health records and identify patterns, which enables risk stratification,” explains Turpie. “Our models can risk-stratify COPD patients, providing clinical decision support tools for care teams so they can intervene early, again with the promise of trying to keep patients out of hospital by treating- them at home”.

Innovations in Scotland to tackle opioid addictions

The potential support that remote monitoring could provide to traditional clinical settings such as hospitals and GP surgeries is only beginning to be realised. Innovative new companies are making use of the volumes of data collected by medical devices in real time to improve healthcare support systems for vulnerable patients.

Founded in Scotland, PneumoWave is an innovative medical technology company that has developed a remote control device that measures chest movement to monitor patients at risk of sudden death, such as those with opioid addiction or epilepsy. These conditions can often cause patients to stop breathing and require urgent treatment.

PneumoWave tracks chest movements every five seconds. When the device detects any abnormalities, it immediately sends an alert to someone the patient has chosen to be notified, be it a friend, family member or emergency medical services.

Acting as a real-time alert for respiratory depression, the PneumoWave Alert device could also be used to prevent sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), as well as a variety of very common unexplained deaths after hospitalization. In a sign of its market potential, the company has expanded operations to include a US headquarters in South Carolina.

“Over the past year, we’ve been building the infrastructure to support post-regulatory sales authorization,” explains Richie Bavasso, president and director of PneumoWave. “We expect our first FDA clearance of many in the second quarter of 2025.”

Management of COPD using remote monitoring technology

Scientists have shown that there is a clear link between opioid addiction and the development of COPD. However, innovative new remote control devices connected to AI software are also improving treatments for this debilitating disease.

At Lenus Health, Turpie has seen the company’s Lenus Stratify® solution deployed across services provided by NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde. The solution is designed to support COPD patients and can identify signs of health deterioration to prevent hospital admissions and readmissions.

Lenus Stratify® is a Software as a Medical Device (SaMD), featuring a suite of AI models that have been developed in collaboration with world-leading physicians. The models provide risk scores across a number of vectors, including risk of hospital admission and readmission in different time windows, mortality, and risk of short-term emergency admission. Risk scores provide care teams with useful information to inform appropriate treatment interventions for patients to help keep them at home and out of the hospital.

“These models support multidisciplinary clinical teams who are presented with risk stratification and other patient information in a comprehensive clinical scorecard. It allows them to monitor patients and inform treatment interventions,” explains Turpie. “Patients may often be unaware of their condition and the data allows the care team to intervene before the condition worsens.

“This can be as simple as the care team contacting the patient and finding him doing his breathing exercises, passing by intervening in the community. We’ve been able to demonstrate that technology can keep patients out of the hospital by using our predictive analytics, getting ahead of problems before they become critical.”

A dynamic health technology ecosystem in Scotland

Turpie believes the future applications of remote monitoring technology in healthcare are “almost limitless”, with a key advance in Scotland.

“By making connections between different data residing within healthcare systems and data generated by the patients themselves, it creates the possibility to develop more sophisticated models and AI that can provide more accurate predictive analytics,” he says. “I believe the convergence of artificial intelligence, big data found in health record systems, genomics and the IoT will continue to push the boundaries of what remote monitoring technology can achieve.”

Turpie cites Scotland as an ideal location to scale a business like Lenus Health because of the “backdrop of enabling and supportive policies in government, the NHS and academia”.

“Scotland has quite an enviable reputation as a world-class research space within the life sciences,” says Turpie. “There is a highly skilled workforce, particularly in pharmaceuticals and engineering, but also in computing and data science. Many universities in Scotland are helping to develop the talent that is well suited to companies like ours.”

In addition, Scotland’s strengths in talent, health technology and healthcare delivery are attracting global interest.

“I think most cities in the US would be very envious of the quality of clinical and engineering talent being trained and educated in Scotland,” adds Bavasso. “Furthermore, as costs are lower in Scotland than in the US, companies can achieve a significant return on investment by staffing operations here.”

Home to a range of innovative and dynamic healthcare companies, the Scottish technology ecosystem enables the development and deployment of technologies and technology solutions in the national health services.

Businesses based in Scotland can also benefit from support from government organizations such as Scottish Enterprise and Scottish Development International, who can provide connections with industry specialists and information on potential funding opportunities.

All these factors position Scotland as a prime location for new innovations in healthcare technology and improving the quality of treatments for patients.

To find out more about the sustainability drive within Scottish healthcare, download the free report below.

Sign up for our daily newsletter!

Give your business an edge with our industry-leading knowledge.