Remote Monitoring of Patients with Heart Failure: Characteristics of Effective Programs and Implementation Strategies

Although the effectiveness of remote monitoring (RM) has been extensively studied, a focus on the post-pandemic time period is needed given the social changes and technology advances since this global event occurred.

The present paper responds to this need by reviewing post-pandemic research, to determine if RM of patients with heart failure (HF) using non-implantable devices represents an effective strategy.

A systematic literature review was conducted using PubMed and PMC, and the number of articles included was 19.

A total of 3,031 patients participated in the 19 studies in this review, who had HF (NYHA class I-IV). Most frequent outcomes of interest were: rates of hospitalization (13 studies), death (5 studies), adherence to medications / healthy behaviors (4 studies), associated costs (4 studies), symptom intensity or frequency (3 studies), etc. The studies included in this review unanimously presented significant findings in favor of RM.

The post-pandemic research targeting RM of patients with HF presents more homogenous results to support this type of intervention, as compared to the heterogeneity of the pre-pandemic research.