smartQare and Cuviva support Discovery Care at Home programme in South Africa with integrated remote monitoring and care coordination technology

smartQare and Cuviva today announced a new collaboration with Discovery Health to bring continuous wearable monitoring technology and a Hospital at Home platform to Discovery’s established Care at Home programme.

European digital health companies smartQare (based in the Netherlands) and Cuviva (based in Sweden) partner with Discovery Health to strengthen the technology foundation of the ‘Discovery Care at Home’ offering, which has been available to Discovery Health Medical Scheme members in South Africa since 2022.

Discovery Health is South Africa’s largest medical scheme administrator and managed care provider, accounting for 38.3% of the total membership of South African medical schemes. This includes Discovery Health Medical Scheme, the country’s largest open medical scheme, representing 58% of the open medical scheme market, with a membership base of approximately 2.7 million.

smartQare and Cuviva today announced a new collaboration with Discovery Health - South Africa’s largest medical scheme administrator and managed care provider - to bring continuous wearable monitoring technology and a Hospital at Home platform to Discovery’s established Care at Home programme.

• smartQare’s viQtor medical grade wearable monitoring device enables continuous monitoring of clinically relevant physiological parameters for patients receiving hospital level care at home, transmitting real time data securely to care teams.
• Cuviva’s Hospital at Homeplatform aggregates device data with patient reported information and patient communication with structured care workflows, providing clinicians with a consolidated view of each patient’s condition and supporting timely, coordinated intervention when required.

Dr Ron Whelan, CEO of Discovery Health explains: “As Discovery Care at Home continues to mature and scale, Discovery Health regularly evaluates and strengthens the technology infrastructure required to support safe, reliable and clinically governed care in the home. We are very proud to partner with smartQare and Cuviva as technology partners within our Care at Home programme. Their combined expertise in continuous remote patient monitoring and coordinated digital care workflows strengthens the clinical infrastructure that underpins safe hospital level care in the home. Access to reliable, real time physiological data, supported by integrated care coordination, ensures that each patient’s individual clinical needs are clearly understood and managed, while giving both patients and clinicians confidence that the same standards of oversight and responsiveness are maintained beyond the hospital setting.”

smartQare’s and Cuviva’s collaboration with Discovery Health is locally enabled by South African distributor Airo Health Care, which is responsible for commercial, clinical and technical implementation, enablement and ongoing support.

Discovery Care at Home: delivering hospital-level care beyond the hospital walls
Dr Whelan explains, “In recent years, hospital at home models have increasingly been adopted internationally by leading healthcare systems and institutions to deliver high quality, hospital level care in lower cost, patient centered settings. Both published research and the international experience consistently show that, for appropriately selected patients, hospital at home care can deliver comparable or improved outcomes, high patient satisfaction and reduced exposure to hospital acquired complications.”

“Hospital at home offerings also play an important role in relieving pressure on hospital capacity, enabling healthcare systems to deliver high quality care to more patients without expanding physical infrastructure.”

Launched in January 2022, Discovery Care at Home provides hospital level care in a patient’s home (where the treating doctor has determined that home based care is clinically appropriate) for a range of acute medical and post surgical conditions that would otherwise require admission to a traditional hospital ward. The programme enables patients either to avoid hospital admission altogether or to be discharged earlier, without compromising clinical safety or outcomes, allowing them to recover in familiar surroundings with loved ones close by.

• Clinical governance and multidisciplinary oversight at the centre of care

Discovery Care at Home places the patient at the centre of the care journey. Each admission is overseen by a highly skilled, multidisciplinary clinical team, supported by continuous remote monitoring, 24 hour clinical oversight and clearly defined escalation pathways. Clinical responsibility for each admission remains with the treating doctor and Discovery’s clinical teams, with technology supporting clinical decision making.

Of the approximately 720,000 annual hospital admissions within the Discovery Health Medical Scheme, Discovery Health estimates that around 160,000 (around 25%) could be managed through Care at Home.

Dr Whelan adds, “We actively engage with our healthcare provider community to support understanding and uptake of Care at Home as a care option where clinically appropriate.”

Strengthening Discovery Care at Home integrated remote monitoring and care coordination through SmartQare and Cuviva’s cutting edge offerings
smartQare’s viQtor medical-grade wearable monitoring device is integrated with Cuviva’s Hospital at Home platform to enable continuous visibility into patients’ health status and support coordinated clinical decision-making throughout the admission and recovery period. Both solutions are medical grade, CE marked under MDR Class IIa, and clinically validated.

Johan Vooren, Chief Commercial Officer at smartQare, says: “Delivering hospital-level care safely in the home depends on access to continuous, reliable and clinically meaningful physiological data. smartQare’s medical-grade wearable monitoring provides care teams with the most important metrics required to optimise each patient’s care. The technology also provides early visibility into patient deterioration, enabling timely escalation and informed clinical decision-making. By extending continuous monitoring beyond the hospital walls and integrating it into Discovery’s Care at Home model, we support patients in receiving the same standard of oversight, safety and responsiveness at home as they would in a traditional hospital setting.”

Marco van Elst, Director of International Partnerships at Cuviva, adds: “Discovery Care at Home depends on the ability to translate remote monitoring data into coordinated clinical action across multiple care teams and settings. Cuviva’s Hospital at Home platform brings together continuous monitoring data, patient-reported information and patient communication with structured clinical workflows into a single, shared view of the patient. This supports consistent decision-making, timely intervention and continuity of care throughout the admission, enabling hospital-level care to be delivered safely and effectively in the home.”

Looking ahead: scaling safe, technology-enabled care in the home
The collaboration between Discovery Health, smartQare, Cuviva and Airo Health Care reflects a shared commitment to strengthening the infrastructure required to deliver safe, scalable hospital level care in the home. By combining clinical governance with robust remote monitoring and coordinated digital care pathways, Care at Home continues to evolve as an important component of modern healthcare delivery.