Sattelite-based remote assertive community treatment for patients with mental ilness 

Until relatively recently, most people experiencing severe mental illness were destined to spend much of their lives in residential treatment hospitals. Today, modern pharmaceuticals and assertive community treatment (ACT) teams enable many patients to reside at home, in the community. An ACT staff member must travel to each patient's home to observe the patient taking his or her medication and monitor the patient's response to treatment. Patients/clients who are most in need of ACT homecare services are visited twice daily, everyday for treatment purposes. Extensive travel requirements make the ACT treatment approach expensive, but less expensive and more effective than the alternative of hospitalisation. Currently, there are more than 60 Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) teams in the Province of Ontario, funded by the province. The number is growing. Thirty of the teams are treating, on average, 50 patients per team, for a total of 1,500 patients. The REACH project aims to create a cost-effective, commercially viable, satellite based, medical home care solution (including teleconference, remote vital sign monitoring, and satellite telecommunications technologies) that meets the treatment needs of ACT teams and their patients/clients. This solution could substantially reduce the treatment costs by enabling the teams to substitute many "travel visits" for "virtual visits". A pilot projects that treats 20 patients was established. The REACH telehealth based home care solution will not replace the conventional travel based home care system that currently works well. It will enhance the quality of care and reduce the cost per patient so the dollars saved can serve more patients. Instead of the team members physically travelling to the home of each patient as many as 14 times per week in serious cases, many of those visits will be made virtual under this pilot project. The REACH project will implement a TDM/MF-TDMA STAR network architecture to provide the primary network connectivity for the project. An adjunct terrestrial facility will be implemented to extend the satellite-based traffic from the Calgary HUB to the LHRI and the Nursing Station in Woodstock.