Abstract
As advancing age is accompanied by increasing morbidity, the ageing populations ahead will be a challenge to future health care costs. One way to keep health care costs at bay is to reduce avoidable admission of older adults. In Denmark, all frail citizens may receive means-tested municipal home health care service. When a frail older person shows signs of failing health, the community nurse is the first to judge the situation. But older persons may have subtle symptoms, and the pathological picture may be blurred by comorbid conditions. It may thus be hard for the community nurse to decide whether an older person’s failing health needs acute attendance by a physician or not. However, in-home objective clinical assessment by Point of Care (POC) testing followed by real-time upload of test results to a joint IT-platform, which can be accessed by the treating physician, may qualify decision-making. In consequence, this may lead to timely treatment and potentially avoidance of acute admission. We report the development and real-life testing of the “GERI-briefcase”, a portable, handheld POC instrument connected to an interface which uploads collected data to a joint IT-platform. The IT-platform is accessible for both community nurses, primary and secondary care physicians. We show that the GERI-briefcase may be used by trained community nurses in the homes of older adults, and that it streamlines communication across the primary and secondary health care sectors. The effect on avoiding acute admissions is currently being investigated in Svendborg Municipality, Region of Southern Denmark.