Tamer, the Middle-East’s leading healthcare distribution company, has agreed a 5-year deal to bring Huma’s market leading technology platform to power ‘hospitals at home’ with remote patient monitoring to the 34 million people living in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The new health programme will begin with support for patients with diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
The Saudi healthcare transformation is one of the largest in the world and this partnership sees the UK health sector increase its support for its delivery. Indeed, this partnership is a live example of how UK companies are working with the Saudi healthcare system to deliver digital health care solutions which will save lives.
Cardiovascular disease (CVD) and diabetes are the biggest cause of premature death in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. CVD is linked to 37% of deaths in the Kingdom, making it the leading cause of death1, whilst diabetes affects at least 13% of people there2, and another 5%2 may be undiagnosed. Patients will now be able to use Huma’s award-winning3 ‘hospital at home’ system to give clinicians real-world insight into their patients’ health.
The ‘hospital at home’ system comprises a patient app and a clinical portal. It is already used across England, Wales, Germany and the UAE to help people with CVD, COVID-19, musculoskeletal surgery and more. In diabetes, early work with a healthcare consortium in London, UK has found that patients lost 4.1kg in weight and had an average reduction in average blood glucose levels (HbA1c) of 17 mmol / mol in HbA1c4. The technology has almost doubled clinical capacity through virtual wards5 and helped clinicians spot and reprioritise nearly 10% of their cardiac surgery patients on waiting lists who were deteriorating6.
The technology is used to help people with CVD and diabetes in a number of ways. The app can capture patient-generated data through the phone’s camera and accelerometers, or by connecting to medical devices and providing clinically approved questionnaires. Clinicians are able to monitor groups of patients at once, and the system flags any potentially deteriorating patients so that the clinician can spot who may need their attention. In addition, the system can point patients to appropriate educational content and provide reminders about their treatment plan.