Virtual hospital for HIV patients halves consultation times

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Virtual hospital for HIV patients halves consultation times

Aser García Rada+ Author Affiliations 1Madrid

Cite this as: BMJ 2011; 342:d1818

A home telemedicine system for patients with stable HIV infection has proved

popular among patients and has reduced consultation times by half, say doctors

in Barcelona and Madrid.

The Virtual Hospital was developed by a team from the University of Barcelona

Hospital Clinic and the Bioengineering and Telemedicine Unit of the Technical

University of Madrid.

It offers four main services: virtual consultations, a telepharmacy, a virtual

library, and a virtual community. Patients get their drug treatments by post and

can book consultations online, which are responded to within 24 hours.

The doctors told a press conference in Barcelona that the telemedicine system

reduced the number of visits to hospital, including for blood tests, from six or

eight a year to three or four.

It also cuts down consultation times from 20 to 10 minutes.

The programme has " some benefits at the level of personal satisfaction, and from

a technical standpoint patients are equally well controlled, " p María

Gatell, director of the infectious diseases unit of the University of Barcelona

Hospital Clinic, told the BMJ.

Some 200 of the 4000 outpatients with HIV at the clinic are in the Virtual

Hospital programme, and this number will be extended to 500 in the next two

years.

A study that compared care of patients with HIV in the Virtual Hospital system

with standard care found that 65 of 76 Virtual Hospital patients thought that it

improved their access to clinical data and felt comfortable with the

videoconference system (PLoS One, doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0014515). Changes in

viral load in the Virtual Hospital patients were similar to those in patients

receiving standard care. Levels of compliance with treatment and quality of life

measures were also similar.

The authors wrote, " The study shows that Virtual Hospital constitutes a

feasible, fairly satisfactory, and safe tool for the clinical care of stable

HIV-infected patients, and it has no deleterious effect on HIV clinical

parameters, antiretroviral compliance, quality of life or psychological and

emotional status. "

Dr Gatell said, " Virtual care will become increasingly important, because the

number of patients treated in the hospital is rising, " as a result of higher

survival and increased life expectancy among HIV patients. For that reason the

programme's next step will be to extend access to the Virtual Hospital to

primary care patients, he explained.

Although the programme requires investment in IT equipment, " costs have been

recovered so far, " Dr Gatell said, although a cost effectiveness study has not

yet been published.

Notes

Cite this as: BMJ 2011;342:d181