RESOURCES
Case Studies
Happitech is working with clinicians, technology partners and clinical researchers to deliver innovative heart health remote monitoring solutions. We’re bringing personalised care closer to more patients in their homes, freeing up clinician time and improving healthcare efficiency.
RESOURCES
Case Studies
Happitech is working with clinicians, technology partners and clinical researchers to deliver innovative heart health remote monitoring solutions. We’re bringing personalised care closer to more patients in their homes, freeing up clinician time and improving healthcare efficiency.
St Antonius Hospital, The Netherlands
Enhancing Cardiac Health through Virtual Care: An Integrated post-AF Ablation Pathway
Highlights
• Implementation of a low-cost remote patient monitoring pathway
• 35 new patients per month entering the pathway and 1000 treated so far
• Reduced cardiology team workload, increased capacity of AF-ablation service
• Improved Patient Outcomes and Quality of Life
• Patients empowered to take control of their day-to-day health
• A model for future healthcare transformation
Background:
St Antonius Hospital in the Netherlands has been making investments in digital health solutions to improve patient outcomes and efficiencies in healthcare service delivery. This includes pioneering work to develop virtual care pathways utilising Happitech’s partner - Luscii - a remote patient monitoring platform and patient-facing health app.
The cardiology team at St Antonius Hospital, led by the cardiologist and electrophysiologist Dr Jippe Balt wanted to develop an integrated remote patient monitoring pathway focused on patients requiring Atrial Fibrillation (AF) Ablation - a common procedure to correct the heart rhythm of patients suffering from irregular heart rhythm.
Goals:
• Enhance patient outcomes, quality of life and empowerment
• Improve the capacity and efficiency of the AF-ablation service
• Improve health service efficiency across the integrated care pathway
Solution:
The new virtual post-AF Ablation pathway aims to shift the burden of care for post-AF ablation patients from face-to-face hospital outpatient and clinic visits to remote patient monitoring and thereby to empower patients and improve their quality of life and to optimise healthcare resources.
The Post AF- ablation procedure takes place in the St Antonius Hospital day clinic. Discharged the same day, the patient is invited to use the Luscii remote monitoring platform and patient facing app enabled with Happitech hardware-free, remote, heart rhythm detection. Specialist e-nurses in the cardiology team ‘onboard’ each patient and ask them to submit a weekly 90-second reading of their heart rhythm using their smartphone. There is no longer any need for them to visit a hospital or clinic for an electrocardiogram (ECG).
The weekly readings are received and monitored by St Antonius Hospital e-nurses. If no arrhythmia is detected and no intervention, the cardiology team will also check-in with the patient at 3 and 12 months after the procedure. If, after 12 months there has been no arrhythmia detected the patient receives a message through the Luscii app that the post-AF Ablation monitoring period is over.
Results:
Empowered patients: Feedback from the St Antonius Hospital patient forum suggests that patients feel more in control of their day-to-day health whilst still cared for by their cardiology team.
Reduced outpatient appointments: Enabling hardware-free, remote heart rhythm detection and monitoring at home via smartphone eliminated the need for patients to visit a clinic or hospital for an ECG.
Reduced cardiology team workload: e-nurses can monitor multiple post-AF ablation patients via the Luscii dashboard. Cardiologist contact and the need to visit outpatient clinics have significantly decreased with no detriment to patient safety.
Increased service capacity: The cardiology team can perform 5 AF ablations per day. This could be increased further. Critical to this is the ability for patients to monitor their heart rhythm from home rather than having to visit an outpatient clinic for an ECG.
For a deeper dive into the implementation and key learnings from the virtual post-AF Ablation pathway at St Antonius Hospital.
HEART FOR HEART
5 years of research data in 7 days
The Heart for Heart campaign was one of the first ever to leverage the power of crowdsourcing heart data. All the major Dutch news outlets covered Heart for Heart including invitations to appear in the most watched evening show in the Netherlands.
Participants in the campaign spanned 88 countries, 1200 locations worldwide and 800+dutch towns and cities and raised awareness of the importance of keeping track of heart health.
CHECK AT HOME
Reducing disease burden 25% by 2030
Beginning in Q3 2023, Happitech will be screening 160,000 individuals, aged 50 to 75, across four regions of The Netherlands for atrial fibrillation in one of the largest projects of its kind in Europe.
The goal of the Dutch Cardiovascular Alliance’ Check@Home consortium in bringing together life science and digital health companies and health charities and including Happitech and it’s technology partner Luscii is to develop a roadmap and infrastructure for an accessible and cost-effective national program for early detection and treatment of cardiovascular disease, chronic kidney disease and type-2 diabetes to prevent progression and complications of these diseases.
Without the cost and management of specialist devices, Happitech hardware-free atrial fibrillation detection on an individual’s own smartphone reduces the capital investment for this project by 90%.
LUSCII
“It feels like my cardiologist is always nearby”
Our technology partner Luscii leads the way in the ever expanding breadth and diversity of its remote patient monitoring solutions, virtual wards and clinics offerings to healthcare providers in The Netherlands, the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) and other parts of Europe. These pathways are captured in the famous Luscii Library.
Happitech enables hardware-free heart health monitoring in the Luscii patient app and clinician-facing dashboards across all of its cardiology and other pathways. Each pathway featured in the library describes how the pathway is applied and its goals, plus provides real-life reviews from clinicians and patients who are using the pathways firsthand.
We are also engaged with Luscii in a number of national screening programmes and clinical research projects that can be read about on this page and on our Clinical Studies page.
ORTUS-iHEALTH
Freeing up hospital beds, avoiding unnecessary outpatient appointments and boosting patient outcomes
Ortus-iHealth, a leading provider of remote outpatient services and virtual wards, and Happitech are partnering to deliver innovative virtual cardiology wards including an atrial fibrillation (AF) virtual ward at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust.
Happitech is integrated into the Ortus -iHealth patient app and clinician-facing dashboard providing real-time heart health detection and monitoring for patients pre and post atrial fibrillation ablation procedures.
Deployments at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust and across North West London have proven to reduce key hospital KPIs such as length of hospital stay (LoS), re-escalation and re-admission of patients within 30 days as well as reducing the friction of communication and hand-overs between cardiologists and members of the multi-disciplinary team.
To learn more view Ditch the Device Webinar (June 2023)
OLVG
50% of patients with the choice of digital-first care
The OLVG ‘Hartcentrum app’ allows OLVG patients to easily measure and monitor their health at home. Behind the scenes, OLVG medical team looks at the data and intervenes where necessary. This can reduce the need for unnecessary hospital visits.
Combined with the Luscii app, OLVG has quickly seen the value of integrating Happitech hardware-free heart health monitoring. The hospital is growing its use of innovative digital tools with the goal of offering 50% of its patients the option of digital-first healthcare.
To learn more about reimbursement in The Netherlands for remote telemonitoring read our NL Reimbursement page
To learn more view Read more about OLVG Hartcentrum app
HUMA
Shaping the future of healthcare
We are proud that one of first and longest lasting technology partnerships is with Huma.
We provide hardware free heart rhythm monitoring for Huma virtual wards and remote patient monitoring for healthcare providers and for decentralised clinical trials and companion apps in Life Science.
We are engaged in a number of clinical trials including the Fenland Study
Veerkracht Mental Health
Promoting employee mental, physical and social well-being
The new Dutch Veerkracht (resilience) vitality platform and app promotes mental, physical and social well-being. It empowers employees to measure their stress levels and to manage their own well-being.
The platform offers employers valuable insights to help them meet their workforces’ needs. Resulting in a more vital and healthy organisation.
Veerkracht uses Happitech in combination with a stress coach algorithm to provide important health and stress insights.
YOUR COACH
YourCoach.Health and Happitech are collaborating to empower health and wellness coaches with medical grade heart health data in the US Market.
Health coaches will help guide employees in defining their goals, aligning on tactical strategies, tracking progress and providing support.
The YourCoach platform will act as an employee’s Virtual Home for their health journey, integrating a suite of self-paced digital health solutions such as Happitech and HealthTunes as well as digital therapies that can be incorporated into coaching programs.
STRESS COACH
Managing stress one measurement at a time
Stress is a big concern for the average workplace, as proven by decades of research across Europe. An even bigger problem is the outcome of stress, with burnout and sickness a common symptom experienced by stressed employees worldwide. Met with this problem, Stresscoach thought of a solution: accurate heart-rate measurement to monitor the physical effects of stress in real-time.
Henk Jan Zwolle, the founder of Stresscoach, is an exercise physiologist and former olympic rower with 25 years experience using heart rate measurements and diary entries for athletes. He has pioneered how heart rate variability (HRV) could be used to keep tabs on the ever growing stress levels in the workplace using a wide array of different technologies.
The technologies used were often costly, slow and unwieldy to use in a workplace setting. Laptops connected to ECGs and mobile applications didn’t meet demand and quickly ballooned the costs associated with stress monitoring and management beyond what was reasonable for use in the average workplace.
MOMENTUM MULTIPLY
Stress Score, gives South African insurance company Momentum Multiply members new insights into their stress levels and general well-being.
Momentum Multiply, has partnered with Happitech to provide medical grade, heart health monitoring technology to their members. Through a scientifically validated screening process, users can now get their Stress Score, which gives them new insights into their stress levels and general well-being.
The screening process is quick and easy. Users can simply scan their finger with their smartphone’s camera along with a few data points and they will be provided a Stress Score number ranging from 0-100 indicating their current stress level. The Momentum Multiply platform will also provide insights and tips on how to improve a user’s stress score over time. By providing this clinically validated technology to its members, Momentum Multiply has taken a major step forward in helping people improve their quality of life.
Several studies have found that resting heart rate and heart rate variability are correlated to changes in stress levels. With the integration of Happitech heart rhythm monitoring they can now provide medical grade measurement of users’ vital signs including heart rate variability.
The technologies used were often costly, slow and unwieldy to use in a workplace setting. Laptops connected to ECGs and mobile applications didn’t meet demand and quickly ballooned the costs associated with stress monitoring and management beyond what was reasonable for use in the average workplace.
The topic of mental well-being has become very common in addressing stress and burnout in the workplace. In fact, in 2019, the WHO added burnout in the 11th Revision of the International Classification of Diseases as an occupational phenomenon. Employee stress and burnout is a global concern, and companies need to find better ways to support employees in this area. Momentum Multiply is leading the way by giving its members the ability to accurately measure their heart rate and HRV and understand how it impacts their health.
EVA
Reducing risks and preventing stress in pregnant women
For pregnant women, both stress and smoking can potentially have serious effects on their developing child, as well as their own health and well-being. For the researchers at the Department of Development Psychology at Vrije Universiteit, finding a way to identify and understand these factors is a must as part of their ongoing studies.
With the need to find a way to monitor pregnant women efficiently and easily without the need for intensive or extensive methods, the researchers at Vrije Universiteit came up with a solution known as the Eva App. Made available for most smartphones, this app was developed to provide a sufficient record during pregnancy of the women involved in the study, including cravings for smoking and levels of stress.
With their app already in development, the research team didn’t yet have an efficient way to collect accurate vital sign data. With many other tools requiring peripherals or expensive additions for proper functionality, the Happitech SDK soon became the ideal solution to their needs and requirements for ongoing research. One of the key benefits of Happitech for Eva App was that in-person appointments weren’t a requirement. Women taking part in the study could record vital heart-rate data wherever they happened to be, ensuring there were no gaps in Vrije Universiteit’s research even if expectant mothers couldn’t attend sessions or missed a group appointment.
Happitech SDK is also user-friendly, a key point for the Eva App team when it came to developing an application that works with pregnant women from a range of educational backgrounds and differing incomes. All Happitech requires is for the user to follow simple instructions on-screen on their own smartphone, making it accessible to all to take vital sign measurements, without additional equipment.