Heart failure risk remote monitoring program in the very elderly patients. Results of the “GER-e-TEC” experiment

Abstract

Telemedicine is believed to be helpful in managing patients suffering from chronic diseases, in particular elderly patients with chronic heart failure. This was the basis for the “GER-e-TEC study,” an experiment involving the use of the smart MyPredi ™ e-platform to automatically detect the exacerbation heart failure risk. The MyPredi ™ platform is connected to a medical analysis system that receives physiological data from medical sensors in real time and analyzes this data to generate (when necessary) alerts. These alerts are issued in the event that the health of a patient deteriorates due to an exacerbation of their chronic diseases. An experiment was conducted between September 24th, 2019 and November 24th, 2019 to test this alert system. During this time, the platform was used on patients being monitored in an internal medicine unit at the University Hospital of Strasbourg. The alerts were compiled and analyzed in terms of sensitivity, specificity, and positive and negative predictive values with respect to clinical data. The results of the experiment are provided below. 36 patients in total were monitored remotely, 21 of whom were male. The mean age of the patients was 81.4 years. The patients used the telemedicine solution for an average of 22.1 days. 336 alerts (20.9%) were emitted for the “HF” risk, with an average of 11.2 alerts per patient and a standard deviation of 9.3. In terms of sensitivity, the results were 100% for heart failure risks, and extremely satisfactory in terms of positive and negative predictive values. In terms of survival analysis, the number of alerts had an impact on the duration of hospitalization due to decompensated heart failure. The MyPredi ™ telemedicine system allows for the generation of automatic, non-intrusive alerts when the health of a patient deteriorates due to heart failure risk.