Health authorities in Rome have repurposed a COVID-19 telemonitoring tool to monitor people at risk from heat-related illness.

In the Lazio region, GPs, health care workers and primary care services are supervising and caring for patients during heatwaves using the LazioAdvice teleconsultation system and Lazio Doctor per COVID app.

These telemonitoring systems allow healthcare to contact elderly and vulnerable people to provide heatwave advice such as adapting their medication or drinking more water.

WHY IT MATTERS

Heat stress is the leading cause of climate-related death and will have an increasing impact in the coming years due to rising temperatures.

Climate change means that dangerously high temperatures now hit European cities more frequently. Europe had its second warmest July on record this year, with temperatures 1.4 degrees Celsius higher than the average for 1991-2020.

THE LARGER CONTEXT

Extreme heat has a significant impact on public health. A recent study published in Nature found 37% of deaths related to heat exposure around the world between 1991 and 2018 were related to global warming caused by humans.  

The World Health Organisation (WHO) Europe Guide on Adaptation to Heat for Health provides the building blocks of a plan to ensure an effective heat response for local populations.

ON THE RECORD

Francesca de'Donata an epidemiologist from the Lazio Regional Health Authority, told Euronews: “In the Lazio region we actively survey subjects who are most at risk, which are elderly with chronic conditions. We have a registry, so we have a list of who these patients are and through GPs who have a record of all their patients they actively survey them. With phone calls, through an app and teleassistance or telemedicine they can check up on them and have a clinical evaluation of patients. They can refer them to a hospital or change their medication.

“The patient can register on the app himself and say he wants to be surveyed if his GP isn’t included in the surveillance plan and then other primary care services will interact with the patient and see how he’s feeling. This system was set up for COVID when we had to do a COVID surveillance of patents who weren’t severe and were at home. Then we thought we could adapt it for heatwaves given the conditions and the restrictions that are still in place.”

Professor Jan Semenza, climate change expert and principal of Global Lateral Public Health Consulting, said: “Heat-related mortality in Europe is estimated to have increased by a third in 2018 compared to 2000. Moreover, one in three European deaths from heat between 1990-2018 is estimated to be attributed to human-induced global warming. However, heat-related deaths are preventable, and these new technologies are a valuable contribution to public health practice. Climate change is here to stay and we need to find novel means of climate change adaptation such as this COVID-19 telemonitoring tool.”