Empowering yourself as a patient

Empowering yourself as a patient

"I'm a big fan of digital. It's just the way to go these days as far as monitoring your health," says Russell Winwood, a triathlete who's had a severe lung condition for over a decade. He shares his story with us on World Patient Safety Day.

"I think we're coming out of an era where patients go to see their specialists, get their scripts, and then just wait till the next appointment," Russell tells This Is MedTech. "Patients now want to do things between appointments to help manage their disease. And I think doctors are very enthusiastic to have patients do that, but also to be able to monitor what they're doing as well."

At 45, Russell was diagnosed with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), the third leading cause of death worldwide according to the World Health Organization. He started noticing that training was getting harder and he was constantly short of breath. His doctor ran some lung function tests including spirometry, which uses medical technology that can identify abnormal breathing patterns. It showed that his lung function capacity was below 30%.

"I was diagnosed with 'end-stage' COPD. I was pretty much told to go and make myself comfortable and get my affairs in order. But I certainly wasn't ready to give up on this life," says Russell. Instead of letting the illness define him, he threw himself into more exercise. "For my wife and I, the only thing that ever made sense was to exercise. It's good for healthy people. It's got to be good for unhealthy people as well. And that's what we did," he explains.

"There wasn't a lot of information about exercise and COPD at the time. There was a little bit of talk about pulmonary rehabilitation, but in most countries it was poorly operated or not available at all. Nowadays, there's a real drive to try and get pulmonary rehab available to all patients," Russell notes. Digital solutions and wearable technology can play a big role in helping patients be active participants in their own health care and safety.

"I use a range of digital tech. I use smart watches, a smart ring, a sleep tracker and a pulse oximeter to check my blood oxygen levels, which I can Bluetooth to my computer, get a report, and send that report to my doctor. I also have a home spirometry unit that, again, I can share the data with my doctor," he says.

The smartwatches and ring measure a range of things, from sleep to heart rate to body temperature. "Even though I bought the ring to monitor my sleep, I found it's very good at predicting when I've got an onset of an infection. Your body temperature generally rises a couple of days before you start to show symptoms," he explains.

"Early detection is important. Like anything COPD-related, the quicker you can get onto some medication when an exacerbation starts, the more likely you're going to get on top of it before it gets too severe."

When we spoke to Russell, he was gearing up to run the Berlin Marathon, while also organising a virtual global event for World COPD Day in November called the COPD Baton Pass. "We have countries around the world showing what they do with pulmonary rehab and exercise, but also talking about the latest advances." The project intends to profile the importance of getting a respiratory diagnosis as well as raising awareness of COPD and the importance of being active when living with COPD.