Smart system for the management of Heart Failure in older adults

SmartBEAT addresses the needs of senior Heart Failure (HF) patients and their formal (health workers) and informal (family and friends) caregivers by offering an integrated solution to leverage patient self-care through autonomous condition monitoring and real-time feedback to their carers. It is a mobile solution capable of acquiring older adult´s physiological data and adequately process, manage and report these data to their carers. The solution is a smart phone based HF telemonitoring kit, which uses communication technologies and sensing devices to remotely monitor several clinical variables of HF patients, such as physical activity levels, weight, blood pressure, oxygen in the blood, heart rate and rhythm, and therapeutic compliance. The monitoring is based on individual sensors, which together with the smart phone and the user´s home scale provides for all the physiological measurements needed to adequately monitor the health status of the patient. These data are processed, stored, and later transmitted to caregivers, allowing a systematic, simple and quick monitorization of HF patients at home. The acquired data is handled by a specialized algorithm that processes and compares measured values with baseline values of the patient, possibly giving rise to automatic alerts for therapeutic adjustments or physician notifications, according to the clinical status. From the patient standpoint, SmartBEAT allows a close surveillance and monitorization of several clinical parameters without the need for a face-to-face outpatient appointment. The patients have a solution easy to use, providing reassurance regarding their health condition or giving recommendations in case of decompensation. The patient centered approach to health services that the SmartBEAT solution is based on is essential to improve HF outcomes since many older adults do not recognize the value of self-care and daily condition monitoring. The first fully integrated prototype are ready. It has been field tested in Portugal, Belgium, The Netherlands and Norway.

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The SmartBEAT solution is a smartphone based Heart Failure telemonitoring kit, which uses communication technologies and sensing devices to remotely monitor several clinical variables of HF patients considered essential by expert cardiologists. It has four main components: 1) The Vital Signs System (VSS) encompasses the devices required for acquiring the user`s physiologic data and securely deliver it to the correct endpoint. 2) The SmartBEAT Companion (SBC) provides a bridge between the VSS and the remaining components and acts as a primary user interface for the patients. 3) The SmartBEAT Inference Unit (MIU) is responsible for storing and processing the data obtained with the VSS component. This component contains the system intelligence 4) The Caregivers Portal (CGP) is a web application serving as the front-end for the formal and informal caregivers. A full-fledged, mobile and tailored integration of telemonitoring sensors for Heart Failure care that connects both primary and secondary end-users is yet to be made, and that is what SmartBEAT aims to achieve. HF patients and their carers will be involved in functional and non-functional requirement analyses, as well as in prototype and heuristic evaluations. Iterative design evaluations will be performed in order to study to which extent the solution is compatible with senior patient´s abilities and needs. Congestive Heart Failure (HF) is a major health problem, associated with high mortality, morbidity, healthcare costs, and recurrent hospitalizations. In Europe, there are 15,000,000 individuals with HF and it is currently the leading cause of hospitalization for patients older than 65 years. Heart failure is a chronic condition associated with recurrent decompensations, which often lead to hospitalization with significant deterioration of quality of life. Thus the SmartBEAT solution has an enormous potential both in terms of economy and increased quality of life for a large group of elderly.