By Katarina A. Lewczyk | Date published: March 4, 2025
Apurv Soni and Laurel O’Connor Highlight Success of Healthy at Home Study
The Healthy at Home study, a multimodal, digital community-based intervention, has proven successful in decreasing illness-related distress in treating patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). According to principal investigator Apurv Soni, MD, PhD, assistant professor of medicine in the Division of Health Systems Science-Clinical Informatics Section, and co-director of the Program in Digital Medicine, and co-investigator Laurel O’Connor, MD, assistant professor of medicine in the Department of Emergency Medicine and faculty in the Program in Digital Medicine, the study revealed that participants were less likely to be hospitalized, and had 61 percent decreased odds of readmission within 30 days of hospitalization. Participants also displayed trends toward fewer emergency department visits and shorter hospital stays. Drs. Soni and O’Connor recently spoke with UMass Chan News about their study.
“Even in our relatively small study, the fact that we found statistically significant findings of clinically relevant improvement associated with use of this technology was really an ‘Aha!’ moment for us,” explained Dr. Soni. “We did not anticipate that it would be this impactful. We just wanted to demonstrate proof of concept.”
The Healthy at Home program includes home-based mobile integrated health services, a physician-supervised team of paramedics available 24/7 to perform in-home medical care, a mobile integrated health dashboard that displays biometric data from wearable sensors, results of patient-reported outcomes and relevant clinical data from the electronic health record, and Wellinks’ virtual-first COPD management solution, which combines virtual pulmonary rehabilitation, personalized health coaching, monitoring through connected devices to measure spirometry and pulse oximetry, and an easy-to-use patient app.
“Healthy at Home is one of the first clinical trials to integrate digital tools—including wearable devices and study apps—with on-the-ground home-based clinical services, facilitating comprehensive monitoring, detection, evaluation, and treatment completely outside of brick-and-mortar health care facilities,” said Dr. O’Connor.