Evolution of SmartBEAT for Heart Failure Telemonitoring

Abstract

The prevalence of Heart Failure is growing exponentially in the last decades, particularly amongst older adults. Heart Failure is a chronic cardiovascular disease that demands self-care management and substantial healthcare resources. For that reason, it is highly associated with hospital readmissions and mortality. Due to increased hospitalization costs, excessive waiting times and lack of specialized healthcare professionals to follow-up this growing population, telemedicine and telemonitoring technologies have become the best solutions to support health providers in the disease management tasks. Telemonitoring technologies offer better and more comfortable care because the elderly do not have to leave the comfort of their home to interact with the doctors, giving and receiving daily feedbacks trough these new applications, wearables, and health care platforms. This paper provides a comprehensive review covering the current progress of research in telemedicine and telemonitoring and their applications to Heart Failure Management services. It presents SmartBEAT, which demonstrated during a pilot phase, a user adherence of 97% for three months. Furthermore, SmartBEAT plus, an improved solution, is described, and the system usability a technology acceptance will be evaluated through a pilot with 40 Heart Failure Patients, involving nurses and cardiologists.

Keywords: Telemedicine; health information management; heart failure; heart failure management; telemonitoring; telemonitoring systems.