Congestive Heart Failure Home Telemonitoring

June 16, 2021 updated by: University Hospital of North Norway

Congestive Heart Failure Home Telemonitoring : A Home Telemonitoring Service for Chronic Heart Failure Patients on Trial

Remote monitoring of chronic heart failure can reduce deaths and hospitalisations, and may provide benefits on health care costs and quality of life. Currently there is limited use of remote monitoring for heart failure in Norway. The funding streams and the structure of the norwegian health service is different from other countries that have tried remote monitoring and therefore it is important to examine the utility of such services in Norway. The study is a randomised controlled trial that will allow participants in the intervention group to use a wireless weight scale and blood pressure monitor device that will send automatically the measurements electronically and securely to the Heart Failure Outpatient Clinic of the hospital.

Study Overview

Detailed Description

Providing patients with chronic heart failure (CHF) access to remote monitoring, for example by telephone or telemonitoring using wireless technology, reduces deaths and hospitalisations and may provide benefits on health care costs and quality of life. Remote monitoring of patients can reduce pressure on resources, particularly for conditions like chronic heart failure, which exert a large burden on health services. These are conclusions of a Cochrane Systematic Review.

In Norway the costs for treatment of chronic heart failure are vast, both concerning hospital treatment, daily use of medication over years, and loss of quality of life for patients and their family caregivers. Generally there is little knowledge about what is gained for the billions used. In Norway no telemonitoring services are established and hence no investigations have yet been published. Thus it seems that current evidence of effectiveness and quality is insufficient to recommend usage. The structure and funding streams in Norwegian health services are different from other countries and the conventional services that the intervention has been compared to in previous studies, are most likely heterogeneous. It is thus important to investigate Norwegian conditions.

Advanced telemonitoring technology with electronic transfer of physiological data such as blood pressure and weight is currently being used in research and established routine services in several countries in Europe, amongst them the Netherlands, Germany and the United Kingdom.

The proposed project intends to introduce such a strategy as an avenue for exploring promising new services that would not otherwise be available in Norway. The service consists of daily monitoring the patients' weight and blood pressure directly from their home; automatically and securely transmit the values to a server at UNN; and monitor the values by a trained nurse at the Heart polyclinic.

The primary objective of this study is thus to explore whether, as compared to current care from the heart polyclinic, the introduction of home telemonitoring will reduce hospital readmissions and will, in addition, be cost-effective. This is in line with the recent directions of European telemonitoring programmes for patients with chronic heart failure. This result may define if the telemonitoring of heart failure patients is feasible for Norway or not at all.

Identifying successful innovations to be introduced into the Norwegian health care services is a condition for more cost effectiveness and better treatment quality.

Study Type

Interventional

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

      • Tromsø, Norway, 9038
        • University Hospital of North Norway

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

18 years and older (Adult, Older Adult)

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

No

Genders Eligible for Study

All

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

  • the presence of CHF signs and symptoms such as dyspnoea and peripheral or pulmonary oedema requiring diuretic administration (New York Heart Association [NYHA] functional class II-IV); and
  • ejection fraction (EF) under 40% combined or not with a left ventricular filling pattern supporting the presence of diastolic dysfunction, according to the American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association Guidelines for chronic heart failure.

Exclusion Criteria:

-

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: Single

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm
Intervention / Treatment
No Intervention: Control
Usual care
Experimental: Telemonitoring
Device: Weight and blood pressure device Device: Home telemonitoring device
Weight and blood pressure device integrated in a home telemonitoring kit. The weight scale is Withings The Smart Bodyscale. The blood pressure device is MEDISANA iHealth BP3.
An iPad 2 WiFi 16GB (Model A1395) tablet integrating the telemonitoring kit.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Time Frame
CHF related hospital readmissions
Time Frame: 12 months
12 months

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Length of stay
Time Frame: 12 months
Length of stay per hospitalisation
12 months
Quality of Life MLwHF
Time Frame: 6 months, 12 months
6 months, 12 months
Challenges and opportunities
Time Frame: 12 months
Qualitative analysis of conditions for identified best practices resulting from the intervention, and possible to be developed. Interview with patients and health professionals. Thematic analysis of transcribed interviews. Identification of themes related to best practices and challenges.
12 months
Additional costs/savings resulting from the service
Time Frame: 12 months
Additional costs/savings resulting from the service defined as the difference in the costs of medical care during the study, identified through a cost analysis, between the intervention and control arms.
12 months

Collaborators and Investigators

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

Collaborators

Investigators

  • Principal Investigator: Artur Serrano, PHD, Norwegian Centre for Integrated Care and Telemedicine

Publications and helpful links

The person responsible for entering information about the study voluntarily provides these publications. These may be about anything related to the study.

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

February 1, 2014

Primary Completion (Anticipated)

January 1, 2015

Study Completion (Actual)

January 1, 2015

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

October 30, 2013

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

January 27, 2014

First Posted (Estimate)

January 29, 2014

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (Actual)

June 22, 2021

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

June 16, 2021

Last Verified

January 1, 2014

More Information

Terms related to this study

Other Study ID Numbers

  • UNN-NST-TeleCHF-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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