Device data support in care management (preview)

Important

• This is a preview feature.
• Preview features aren't meant for production use and may have restricted functionality. These features are available before an official release so that customers can get early access and provide feedback.

Device data support in care management (preview) is a capability that enables caregivers to regularly access, track, and view trends in their patients’ vitals by assigning appropriate health devices based on patients' chronic conditions. Care managers can use this data to decide whether to request the patient to attend an appointment.

For information on how to configure device data support in care management (preview), go to Configure device data support (preview).

Device data support in care management (preview) currently supports the following features:

• Adding health devices and maintaining an inventory.
• Enrolling patients and assigning health devices.
• Visualizing data captured from assigned devices.
• Disassociating devices from patients.

You would receive in-app notifications when the actions performed against any of the features are successful or unsuccessful. You can also integrate with Microsoft partners to try out this capability.

Add health devices and maintain an inventory

The preview version of this capability comes packaged with the Device Management application, which healthcare organizations can use to add new health devices when required (either manually or by syncing with a device vendor) and maintain an inventory of these devices. You can deactivate a device from the inventory if any complaints, malfunctioning, or damage is reported.

You can perform these actions from the Device inventory section of the Device management application. You can also filter the devices in your inventory and review their device states.

All the other features are available in both the Device management and Care management applications. The information is synced between the two applications irrespective of where the action is performed.

Enroll patients and assign health devices

After the healthcare organization chooses a patient for tracking vitals, you can use the app to enroll the patient for device data support (preview). You can find this option in the patient's Profile tab.

After successful enrollment, you can see the following two new tabs for the patient - Devices and Vital charts. These sections contain the patient's device information and the charts generated from the observations captured from the devices.

You can now assign one or more health devices to the patient using the Assign device option. When you select this option, you can view all the devices in the inventory that are available for assignment.

The care manager can specify or modify the observation tracking duration for an assigned device. This date can be set using the Assigned Till field displayed in the following screenshot.

Note

You cannot enter any date that has already passed as the assignment end date.

Visualize data captured from assigned devices

Data coming in for a particular assigned device (against the patient) are stored as FHIR compliant observations using Azure Health Data Services such as the MedTech service. When these observations surface into the application, care managers can view the trends of the patient's vitals data using the Patient observation chart. The patient observation chart is a Power BI template application that must be installed and configured to integrate the chart into the application.

From the chart dropdowns, care managers can choose any combination of vitals and observation periods to visualize the tracked data in the form of trend charts. Based on these observations, care managers can decide whether to request the patient to attend an appointment. These reports enable them to stay on top of their patients’ long-term health trends.

The observations and other device information are also added to the patient's longitudinal health record.

Unassign devices from patients

You can use the Unassign device option to unassign a device from a patient. This action restricts the device observations from being captured.

You can also use the Edit option to modify the assignment end date.

The device assignment history for the patient (in terms of devices assigned in previous instances) is recorded in the Device History section.

See also

What is Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare?
Configure device data support (preview)
Partner integration for device data support (preview)
Generate sample data for device data support (preview)
Troubleshoot device data support (preview)