Long-term home monitoring of Heart Failure patients for improved care and reduced hospitalisation

Many older people suffer from the long-term disabling illnesses of heart failure and/or pulmonary hypertension. The symptoms are shortage of breath and severely restricted walking range. Without medication, patients get progressively worse until the disease kills them. With medication – a combination of three types - the symptoms can be successfully alleviated. Both over-medication and under-medication can be medically dangerous and costly, either a waste of drugs, side effects or the patient requiring re-hospitalisation. The vital measurement for controlling medication is pulmonary artery pressure (pap) which currently can only be measured by catheterisation, involving a hospital procedure and risk. Professor Chris McLeod (Imperial College London) and colleagues propose to measure pap using a tiny pressure sensor placed securely within the artery. Measurements can then be made at any time by interrogating the sensor by radio from a pocket-sized reader. The reader will be permanently, wirelessly linked to the hospital. Professor Tarasssenko's research group has extensive technical and clinical experience of real-time monitoring of patients in hospital and of the use of mobile-phone based telehealth to improve the management of chronic disease. Close control of the medication is therefore possible, leading to improved patient condition, slower progression of the disease and reduced re-hospitalisation. Measurement quality is guaranteed and measurements during normal activity are better than current catheter-based measurements in a clinic or hospital bed. The patient will know that they have 24/7 care.