Supporting Care and Independence at Home

February 18, 2016 updated by: Barnsley Hospital

The primary objective of this project is to investigate whether, in a pilot randomised controlled trial, the use of telecare (remote monitoring) technologies reduces the frequency of hospital admissions for people with chronic heart failure (CHF) and to inform the design of a larger randomised controlled trial of telecare for CHF.

Secondary objectives are:

  1. To investigate whether there are benefits to users
  2. To understand the impact on carers in terms of carer stress
  3. To investigate whether there are benefits to the NHS and other statutory provisions
  4. To investigate which users receive the greatest benefits
  5. To inform whether remote monitoring of CHF patients should be provided as part of hospital discharge for a set period of time or whether it should be provided long term and be used in a preventative manner
  6. To investigate whether CHF episodes can be detected and predicted based on lifestyle changes
  7. To determine whether lifestyle monitoring equipment can be correlated with the information from the CHF monitoring system to determine the potential to detect deteriorating health.

Study Overview

Status

Completed

Conditions

Intervention / Treatment

Detailed Description

The 2004 Department of Health publication "Improving Chronic Disease Management" highlights that: 17.5 m adults in the UK may be living with a chronic disease; Around 80% of GP admissions relate to chronic disease; Patients with a chronic disease or complications use over 60% of hospital beds. Evidence from the US suggests that people with chronic conditions consume 78% of all health spending. The NHS modernisation agency has suggested that patients with chronic diseases should, in the future, no longer end up in acute beds when they could be treated in a community setting, or supported at home.

Chronic heart failure (CHF) is a major chronic disease which has been recognised in the UK with a National Service Framework (NSF) for Coronary Heart Disease. In industrialised countries it affects 1% of the population on average and 10% at 70 years of age. It accounts for 5 per cent of all medical admissions to the hospital (120,000 hospital admissions annually) costing an estimated £360 million to the NHS with 6,000 deaths each year from CHF.

The disease has a poor prognosis as within 5 years of diagnosis there is a 50% mortality, and many debilitating, costly and unplanned hospital admissions. Indeed, as many as 50% of patients are readmitted within 3 months of initial discharge. It has been suggested that up to 50% of hospital admissions for heart failure are preventable.

Telecare proposes an earlier diagnosis and with more appropriate and timely use of drugs this can increase patient survival and their quality of life. A weight gain of just a few pounds can signal that a chronic heart failure patient is retaining fluid, for example. If caught early enough, the patient may be able to take medication or otherwise manage the problem at home, rather than having to be hospitalised which improves care and saves money. There is extensive evidence that hospitalisation rates in patients with heart failure can be substantially reduced by improved patient education, patient self monitoring of weight, and rapid response to early signs of clinical deterioration. Telehealth interventions for CHF have tended to be based on devices asking specific questions with answers being entered by users. The information provided is then often supplemented with data from weighing scales and blood pressure monitors, with this being forwarded through the telephone system to a central sever. Here medical staff review the data and respond to patients with increasing risk. Automated software is also becoming available that can highlight to practitioners when a certain patient is outside of practitioner defined parameters or is not using their equipment regularly.

Lifestyle monitoring systems, using movement detectors and magnetic proximity switches on fridge and entry doors, can generate a profile of the user's lifestyle. Deviations from the normal profile can result in an alert being generated.

Correlations between both health and lifestyle strategies have not been conducted and this trial provides this opportunity.

Within the realms of this research study the lifestyle monitoring system will not be utilising the 'alert' system. It will purely be in a data gathering mode.

Study Type

Interventional

Enrollment (Actual)

62

Phase

  • Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

This section provides the contact details for those conducting the study, and information on where this study is being conducted.

Study Locations

  • United Kingdom
    • Yorkshire
      • Barnsley, Yorkshire, United Kingdom, S75 2EP
        • Barnsley Hospital NHS Foundation Trust

Participation Criteria

Researchers look for people who fit a certain description, called eligibility criteria. Some examples of these criteria are a person's general health condition or prior treatments.

Eligibility Criteria

Ages Eligible for Study

60 years and older (Adult, Older Adult)

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

No

Genders Eligible for Study

All

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

  • Participants identified as having chronic heart failure
  • Over the age of 60
  • New York Heart Association (NYHA) functional classification 2, 3, or 4.

Exclusion Criteria:

  • Ejection fraction more than 40%
  • Under the age of 60
  • Class 1 as determined by the NYHA

Study Plan

This section provides details of the study plan, including how the study is designed and what the study is measuring.

How is the study designed?

Design Details

  • Primary Purpose: Supportive Care
  • Allocation: Randomized
  • Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
  • Masking: None (Open Label)

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm
Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: Docobo
telemonitoring at home system for heart failure
Device: Chronic heart failure monitoring system
Device: Lifestyle monitoring system
No Intervention: Control
No telemonitoring system in place

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Different number of hospital admissions between groups

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Benefits to users
Impact on carers

Collaborators and Investigators

This is where you will find people and organizations involved with this study.

Sponsor

Barnsley Hospital

Collaborators

Imperial College London
University College, London
University of Dundee
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, UK
Anchor Trust
Thomas Pocklington Trust
Tunstall

Investigators

  • Principal Investigator: Mark Hawley, Barnsley Hospital NHS Foundation Trust

Study record dates

These dates track the progress of study record and summary results submissions to ClinicalTrials.gov. Study records and reported results are reviewed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make sure they meet specific quality control standards before being posted on the public website.

Study Major Dates

Study Start

November 1, 2005

Primary Completion (Actual)

September 1, 2007

Study Completion (Actual)

February 1, 2009

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

September 13, 2005

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

September 13, 2005

First Posted (Estimate)

September 19, 2005

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (Estimate)

February 19, 2016

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

February 18, 2016

Last Verified

February 1, 2016

More Information

Terms related to this study

Keywords

Additional Relevant MeSH Terms

Other Study ID Numbers

  • EPSRC Grant No. GR/S29058/01

This information was retrieved directly from the website clinicaltrials.gov without any changes. If you have any requests to change, remove or update your study details, please contact register@clinicaltrials.gov. As soon as a change is implemented on clinicaltrials.gov, this will be updated automatically on our website as well.

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