Buddy Healthcare has partnered with Heart Hospital, owned by three wellbeing services counties (Pirkanmaa, Central Finland, and Kanta-Häme). The collaboration commenced in September 2022, with the goal of standardising patient care coordination across Heart Hospital units for patients preparing for angiography and progressing to the coronary artery disease (CAD) follow-up and remote care process. Post-angiography, the objective was to monitor and follow up on CAD development (risk factors) and proactively prevent deterioration and costly hospitalisation. The data transfer has been fully automated through integrations, and data moves seamlessly between Buddy Healthcare’s care coordination platform and Heart Hospital’s cardiology system. In December 2023, Heart Hospital captured the Effectiveness Act of the Year 2023 award with OmaSydän service.
Elective coronary angiography preparation and 12 months of CAD care pathway
Heart Hospital’s patients began using a customer-branded mobile application called OmaSydän (“MyHeart”) to access care-related instructions, forms, Quality of Life (QoL), and physical fitness questionnaires before angiography. After the procedure, all patients (both elective and acute) diagnosed with CAD are assigned to a 12-month digital remote care pathway. This pathway includes remote coronary artery disease education, frequent risk factor questionnaire capture, and remote monitoring and coaching. The app plays a pivotal role by regularly prompting patients to complete and submit QoL and physical fitness questionnaires to the care team.
The significance of CAD remote follow-up care pathway
Critical risk factors for coronary heart disease include smoking, diabetes, hypertension, high cholesterol levels, and family history. The OmaSydän mobile app enables patients to routinely answer QoL questionnaires such as 15D, addressing these risk factors. The 15D is a Finnish-based, widely used QoL questionnaire measuring, for example, a patient’s quality of life related to breathing, usual activities, mental function, and discomfort and symptoms. Each patient answers a 15D questionnaire before angiography and several times (at 3 months, 12 months, and for high-risk patients, an additional 6 months) after the procedure if diagnosed with CAD.
Heart Hospital's clinical team evaluates patients' submissions through a dedicated clinical dashboard. Based on the responses, healthcare professionals provide patients with remote coaching, guidance, and medication optimisation as required. Nurses can evaluate whether additional follow-up appointments are necessary.
Dr Markku Eskola, Medical Director and Chief Physician at Heart Hospital, said, "Heart Hospital operates on three different wellbeing service counties, so we wanted to standardise and modernise all of our hospitals’ patient care coordination with digital guidance and support. With the OmaSydän patient app, we can offer more frequent and personalised support than before, which patients with coronary artery disease have felt necessary.”
"With the 12-month care pathway, we aimed to improve the management of patients’ risk factors and assess the effectiveness of CAD treatment on patients' quality of life, measured through various Patient-Reported Outcome Measures (PROMs). Automated and timed data capture saves time for our clinical team and improves our efficiency.”
"Before the app was offered to our patients, we implemented integrations between Buddy Healthcare’s platform and our Kardio Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system, including the quality registry. This fully integrated care pathway solution, from referral to remote follow-ups, ensures that data moves automatically between our clinical team's main systems.“
Dr Eskola envisions achieving an 80% usage rate for the OmaSydän mobile app among Heart Hospital's CAD patient population.
How does the data move seamlessly between Buddy Healthcare’s platform and Kardio?
The manual work related to data transfer has been minimised through the integrations between Buddy Healthcare’s care coordination platform (OmaSydän app and clinical dashboard), and Heart Hospital’s cardiology ERP system called Kardio. Patient data, such as demographics, appointment times, and diagnosis, is only recorded in Kardio, and integrations enable automated data transfer to the care coordination platform.
The new care process, encompassing all the steps from referral to remote follow-up, was planned and designed to streamline the coronary angiography and CAD care pathways and improve the overall care experience and support. This is a perfect example of how a care coordination platform can significantly support the needs of patients and clinical teams.
Heart Hospital captured the Effectiveness Act of the Year 2023 award with OmaSydän
Vaikuttavuusseura ry (*The Finnish Effectiveness Society*) selected the Heart Hospital’s remote CAD care service as a winner in the Effectiveness Act of the year 2023 in the category of healthcare services. Heart Hospital’s OmaSydän (“MyHeart”) service was introduced on the competition organiser’s website with the following introduction.
Cardiovascular diseases are the most significant group of diseases among the population in Finland, and coronary artery disease is the most common cause of death among Finns. 11,000 Finns die from coronary artery disease every year, and traditional healthcare methods have not sufficiently achieved the desired results in the secondary prevention of coronary artery disease. The Heart Hospital's OmaSydän ("MyHeart") remote support care systematically slows down the progression of coronary artery disease, utilising modern digital technology, where patients receive remote guidance and support through a mobile application with the goal of providing comprehensive treatment for the risk factors of coronary artery disease. The Effectiveness Act (OmaSydän) from Heart Hospital is significant from the point of view of public health and the national economy and is based on effectiveness. OmaSydän remote support service is nationally scalable, which helps ease the pressure of staff shortages and improves system integration.
