Picture a person, Jack, who has just left the hospital after a serious medical episode. Jack is well enough to return home, but is still in the danger zone for days to come. Prior to Remote Patient Monitoring, Jack would have to make constant, recurring appointments to meet with his healthcare provider, tying up their time and costing him, his insurance, or the state with each one.

Now, with RPM, Jack will be able to launch a video call through a connected tablet with his healthcare provider over AT&T’s 4G LTE network, check his vitals with paired Bluetooth instruments, and have his providers alerted if there is any danger, saving time, saving money, and freeing up healthcare resources. Lastly, by connecting with mHealth, Jack will be able to elect to link his information up to other health-related applications, and easily share it if he changes providers or sees a new healthcare specialist.

Eric Rock, chief executive officer of Intuitive Health, was the founder of the leading Emergency Department Information System in the US. Having spent 12 years watching all of the unnecessary waste of valuable providers' time and much of our taxes spent in hospitals, the need was clear.

The idea for the solution came after a large insurance company described how an intuitive, connected digital device in patients' homes could dramatically lower their costs and improve outcomes. Then technologies like Smart Phones and 4G wireless presented the "perfect storm". In early 2012, Intuitive Health and Ericsson, one of the sponsors of the AT&T Foundry^®, brought the project to AT&T.

According to Eric: “We have the once-in-a-century opportunity to radically change the way healthcare is delivered, doing good for everyone — patient, provider and payer.”

Eric is a serial innovator, driven by the desire to solve complex problems. He’s founded three companies, from restaurant workflow to hospital workflow to virtual health workflow.

Remote Patient Monitoring truly embodies the evolution of healthcare, by joining what was once a series of static islands of limited information into a world where people have the ability to efficiently connect with healthcare providers remotely from anywhere in their digital lives:

• Convenient medical care. Remote Patient Monitoring has the ability to reinvent and revitalize the age-old notion of the house call.
• Tailoring the medial experience. AT&T plans to incorporate video calling capabilities into the technology over AT&T’s LTE Network and incorporate human factors research to further improve the experience.
• Healthcare services. AT&T plans to integrate its mHealth technologies into the Remote Patient Monitoring platform.