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The Telehealth Team (Health technology) delivers remote monitoring services across Cheshire and Merseyside, and West Lancashire, supporting around 2,000 patients a day with long-term conditions like COPD, diabetes, and heart failure.
The service has also developed virtual wards for patients requiring urgent and close monitoring at their homes, with oversight from a consultant. In addition, Telehealth continues to support patients requiring oximetry at home for COVID-19.
Watch Nisha Jose, Clinical Team Leader for our Telehealth service talk about the benefits of health technology and how this futuristic pathway is preventing hospital admissions. It also features Colette, one of our Virtual Ward patients, who says “It’s a personalised system that is constantly monitoring me, which makes me feel really safe."
Here is a short animation that explains how Telehealth started as a small project supporting around 50 patients a day, and went to 5,500 patients a day during the height of the pandemic. It now supports long-term condition monitoring, COVID-19 patients and Virtual Wards.
Telehealth is a way of using technology to monitor your own health, with the support of health professionals. It can help you learn more about your condition (COPD, diabetes, heart failure) and how to manage it effectively. You can also answer simple questions about your health and send the information to the clinical team in Telehealth using a smartphone or a tablet provided by the service.
- Help you take control to live more independently and safely at home
- Help you to understand and monitor your conditions from home to improve your quality of life
- Give you the peace of mind that your condition is monitored regularly by a nurse
- Reduce the likelihood of you needing emergency hospital treatment.
This service supports people who require a hospital admission due to pneumonia, heart failure, awaiting cardiac surgery or COVID-19. A Telehealth virtual ward will monitor the patient at home and provide treatment to prevent hospital admission.
The Telehealth team will also support the patient following a hospital admission and continue the treatment at your home with supervision from a consultant. This is to ensure continuity of care and improve your safety by identifying the symptoms early and preventing complications.
In the virtual ward, patients are looked after at home by telehealth clinicians and specialist consultants for up to 14 days. Patients are given devices to record their oxygen levels, heart rate, respiratory rate, blood pressure, ECG, step count, and temperature. Daily results then need to be sent to a telehealth service via a secure system.
The patients can monitor their own oxygen levels and symptoms and contact Telehealth via a designated patient line if required. Patients will be discharged back to long-term monitoring if required or GP after 14 days for follow-up. A discharge summary will be sent to the GP by the consultant.
Telehealth virtual ward is a specialist-led virtual ward initiative in Cheshire and Merseyside. It’s provided by Mersey Care in collaboration with Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital, Liverpool University Foundation Trust, Warrington Hospital and NHS England.
GP: Telehealth works with GP surgeries to identify patients who will benefit from using Health Technology. You need to meet the specific criteria to be referred to the service.
If you are interested in finding out more about using Telehealth, ask someone at your GP Surgery or alternatively, please call our team for further advice and information on 0151 285 4651
Community Matron: If you are under the care of a Community Matron, they can refer you directly to the Telehealth service.
Specialist Nurses: If you are under a specialist nurse's care for your condition, they can refer you directly to the Telehealth service.
Hospitals,111, services, Walk-in centres, ambulatory care units and the midwife can also refer you for telehealth monitoring if required.
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Your measurements and answers help health professionals give you the right support when you need it. You will also receive short education videos that show you how you can improve managing your condition.