A French start-up has developed a connected medical chair capable of collecting the blood pressure or even the temperature of patients in their doctor’s waiting room.
The French start-up Hygia has developed a connected medical chair to be installed in general practitioners’ waiting rooms, capable of collecting the first information the doctor needs at the start of each consultation. “The idea is to make the waiting time useful. Our connected chair weighs, takes the patient’s heartbeat, blood pressure, temperature and pulse oximeter (blood oxygen level)”explains to Figaro Pierre-Jean Brousset, CEO and founder of Hygia.
More time to listen and understand patients
The patient will also be able to enter their symptoms and/or the reasons for their visit from their smartphone. “A medical appointment lasts an average of 15 minutes, of which barely 7 or 8 are devoted to the patient’s health itself. You might as well optimize this time”, specifies the CEO. In short, the upstream collection of this information would give the practitioner more time to examine, know, listen and understand the problem of his patient.
The Hygia Care application has also been developed to allow patients to have a personal space containing all their health information in order to exchange it with their doctor if they wish. This medicalized connected chair should be marketed at the end of the first quarter of 2020 and offered for rental for a price of between €110 and €120 per month (maintenance and product support included). Pierre-Jean Brousset targets “general practitioners, but also nursing homes, pharmacies, occupational medicine and even in emergency centres”. The start-up hopes to equip 1,500 professionals within five years.
Technological innovation at the service of patients
Technological innovation has been at the service of the French and their doctors for some time. Teleconsultation is a perfect example. Since September 2018, general practitioners have been able to use teleconsultation, i.e. to offer consultations remotely, through a screen. A process aimed at facilitating access to care in rural areas suffering from a low density of health professionals and/or establishments, at relieving congestion in waiting rooms and at facilitating the consultation of a doctor for people who have difficult to move.
According to the Ameli.fr website, “tAny doctor can use teleconsultation, regardless of: his specialty, his sector of practice and his place of practice, in town or in a health establishment (city office, multi-professional health center, health center, nursing home, hospital, clinic, etc.). It can be carried out anywhere in metropolitan France and in the overseas departments and regions (DROM) as well as in Mayotte.”
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