Understanding Remote Patient Monitoring as an Infrastructure Framework

Remote patient monitoring (RPM) refers to clinicians’ capabilities for maintaining and adjusting their patients’ plan of care by utilizing remotely gathered data such as vital signs to proactively make medical decisions that improve health outcomes and well-being. The focus of this healthcare capability has grown during the COVID-19 pandemic as it allows for patients to remain at home and thwart the spread of the highly contagious coronavirus and payee policies were quickly changed to adapt to the novel situation. We synthesize the literature and present a four-component digital infrastructure framework to think through the design and implementation of remote patient monitoring projects. We identify research questions that emerge from our description of each component. We believe this framework will be useful to research studying remote patient monitoring as it provides a holistic viewpoint of the technologies involved and how those core elements may interact