January 2008: Largest Telemedicine Study of Chronic Heart Failure Worldwide Begins
The largest controlled telemedicine study of chronic heart failure began in January 2008. The study, titled “Telemedical Interventional Monitoring in Heart Failure”, includes 570 patients, half in the Berlin Brandenburg region and half in Baden-Württemberg. It is scheduled to continue for one year. The goal of the study is to find out whether telemedical monitoring, in addition to already existing treatment, can decrease the mortality of patients with congestive heart failure (CHF) and whether patients can be spared long hospital stays (and the costs associated with them) by early recognition of a worsening condition.
The study is a part of the research and development project “Partnership for the Heart”. A consortium of partners from medicine, industry and health services are taking part in this project.
Aipermon developed its sensor platform of telemedical monitoring systems for this study. Brand-name medical devices have been equipped to measure weight, blood pressure and heart activity (ECG) telemetrically for use by the patient at home. A special version of the AiperMotion activity sensor enables the application of the new measurement devices in the study for regular 6-minute walking tests. The walking test has been established as an indicator to measure the capabilities of patients with CHF.
A “Mobile Medical Assistant” (MMA) enables the central communication of data between the patient and the Telemedical Center. This PDA with software from Aipermon receives all daily measurements automatically using wireless Bluetooth technology. Once received, the measurements are transferred to the Telemedical Center (TMC) over secure data lines. The intelligence of this system makes even more functions possible:
- The patient can indicate his condition on a small questionnaire using a scale ranging from very good to very bad. For this, he only has to select the appropriate estimate once on the MMA questionnaire.
- The TMC can transfer individual measurement plans to each patient. The MMA helps the patient stick to the plan.
- The system constantly checks its own operation so that, for example, defects in devices can be located automatically and repaired quickly without laborious searches for errors.
The Charité University Medicine in Berlin, led by Dr. med. Friedrich Koehler, is carrying out the study. Other partnersin the consortium are the InterComponent Ware Group (electronic patient record), Robert Bosch GmbH (systems integration) and the Robert Bosch Hospital (second TMC).
02.2008