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. 2025 Aug 21:248:108307.
doi: 10.1016/j.rmed.2025.108307. Online ahead of print.

Telemonitoring in patients with COPD: A prospective study with results from the AIRE project

Francisco Marín Sánchez  1 , Mercedes Sánchez Bammatty  2 , Manuel Quero Haro  3 , Francisco Ortega Ruiz  4 , María Del Mar Pérez Luque  5 , Cristina Benito Bernáldez  6 , Ana Muñoz Montiel  7 , Víctor Fernández Gil  5 , Francisco José Ávila Rodríguez  8 , David Mateos Rueda  9 , María Encarnación Fernández Martinez  10 , Enrique Javier Vargas López  11 , Ana Milagrosa Escribano Dueñas  12 , Fernando Ayuso Baptista  13
Affiliations

Telemonitoring in patients with COPD: A prospective study with results from the AIRE project

Francisco Marín Sánchez et al. Respir Med. .

Abstract

Objectives: To evaluate the real-world effectiveness of a home telemonitoring (HTM) system on exacerbations, hospital admissions, and quality of life in patients with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) exacerbators, and to analyse how to implement it within the local public healthcare system of Andalusia, Spain.

Methods: A prospective, multicentre, single-arm study was conducted over a period of 12 months, designed as an intervention program with daily follow-up through an existing platform within the Andalusian Health System and a custom-designed mobile application. The HTM programme was jointly coordinated by pulmonologists and primary care and emergency physicians. Programme effectiveness is assessed by comparing the number of pre- and post-intervention exacerbations, hospitalizations and the quality life.

Results: A total of 104 patients were included, with 34 dropouts and 70 active participants. Implementation of the HTM programme resulted in a 44.3 % reduction in exacerbations (mean 2.64 vs 1.47, p < 0.001) and a 51.58 % reduction in hospitalizations (mean 0.95 vs 0.46, p < 0.001). The quality of life score, measured by the COPD Assessment Test (CAT questionnaire), improved by 4 points (26 %, 14.81 vs 10.97, p < 0.001). Adding this system to the Andalusian healthcare system proved highly effective, dealing with 32,894 incidents, 21,927 biomedical records, and 1560 alerts, 240 of which were classified as moderate or high severity.

Conclusions: This real-world test of an HTM programme, implemented as part of the public healthcare system and utilizing pre-existing healthcare resources, has demonstrated a significant reduction in exacerbations and hospital admissions, along with an improvement in the quality of life for patients with COPD.

Keywords: COPD; Exacerbation; Telemedicine; Telemonitoring.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of competing interest The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: Francisco Marin Sanchez reports was provided by University Hospital Virgen de la Victoria. Francisco Marin Sanchez reports a relationship with Hospital Universitaro Virgen de la Victoria that includes: employment. If there are other authors, they declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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