Paper highlights research showing that remote care yields benefits across the healthcare continuum, including improved quality of life and reduced costs

BOSTON (October 25, 2017) – The Global Coalition on Aging (GCOA) today released a position paper calling for greater attention to remote care delivery (RCD) as a new standard of care for the 21st century. Against a changing landscape defined by rapid population aging, this new paper, Remote Care Delivery: Transforming Healthcare and Long-Term Care to Meet 21st Century Aging Realities, outlines the many benefits of RCD to individuals, their healthcare providers and to the healthcare system overall, including its impact on healthcare costs, care outcomes, and quality of life. GCOA calls upon payers, providers, and policymakers to prioritize RCD as a game-changing investment that will lead to higher-quality and cost-saving care.

Remote care delivery refers to the delivery of care outside of acute care settings, enabled by tools such as telemedicine platforms and devices that remotely track individualized patient data such as diet, exercise, adherence to a medication regimen, and vital signs.

“Remote care is a cost-effective and powerful tool that can help us maintain our functional ability as we age, allowing us to continue to live active and healthy lives on our own terms, and in our own homes,” said Michael Hodin, CEO of the Global Coalition on Aging. “Despite a strong body of research proving the many benefits of remote care – both for health outcomes and in terms of cost reductions – we are not seeing fast enough uptake and integration across healthcare and long-term care systems. With this paper, we hope to highlight the important opportunities the RCD ecosystem opens – for healthcare providers, for payers, for policymakers, and for all of us – and to inspire decision makers to recognize remote care delivery and its benefits across care settings.”

The release of the position paper coincides with the launch of GCOA’s new Remote Care Delivery Initiative, which aims to leverage and mobilize cross-sector expertise to advance the uptake of RCD as a driver of healthy, active, and productive aging, and to encourage action at the global policy level. GCOA’s RCD Initiative kicked off today during the Connected Health Conference, which will gather more than 2,000 thought leaders, healthcare providers, and innovative businesses in Boston, MA, on October 25-27, to discuss the current state and future direction of the industry. Given the conference’s theme of “shaping health and wellness for every generation,” the GCOA RCD Initiative adds a crucial perspective on remote care through the lens of a rapidly growing aging population.

“Remote care is transforming the healthcare system as we know it, reducing costs and unnecessary adverse events like falls and re-hospitalizations,” said David Ryan, who leads the Health Sector Internet of Things Group at Intel and is a partner in GCOA’s RCD Initiative. “Collaboration through channels like GCOA’s RCD Initiative is a critical step toward addressing barriers to remote care implementation, such as insufficient information about available tools, limits in public policy incentives, and lack of operability across technology platforms. It is gratifying to see a multi-sector approach to ensuring that remote care delivery becomes a standard of care for the 21st century.”