Remote Patient Monitoring: A Systematic Review

Remote patient monitoring or telemonitoring aims at improving patient care through digitally transmitted health-related data. That allows early detection of disease decompensation and intervention, patient education and improves patient-physician relationship. Despite its relevance, there are no comprehensive reviews evaluating the variables discussed by clinical studies on telemonitoring. A systematic literature search of PubMed was performed to identify studies about telemonitoring published between 2000 and 2018. These had to be case reports with >5 cases, comparative or clinical studies/trials. The following variables were evaluated: year of publication, author's country, discussed topic, objective of study, follow-up time, number of telemonitoring patients, primary outcome, use of teleconsultation and tele-education, presence of a control group, effectiveness of telemonitoring, telemonitoring strategies, and level of evidence. After screening 947 records, 272 articles were included. The review showed a growing number of publications over the years, with 43.0% being published between 2015 and 2018, providing generally positive results (76.8%). The United States was responsible for 38.2% of articles. Cardiovascular disease was the topic of 47.8% of studies, whereas surgical pathologies and postoperative care represented only 2.6%. Wireless devices or smartphone apps were the most popular strategy (75.7%), with 17.6% of studies employing tele-education and 24.6% employing teleconsultation measures. Most publications were OCEBM Level of Evidence 2 (73.5%). Telemonitoring appears to maximize patient care and effectiveness of treatment. The number of publications illustrates the growing interest in the matter. Telemonitoring has yet to be evaluated in the setting of postoperative care and surgical pathologies.