…that the intervention group had significantly delayed time to readmission relative to the control patients, but there were no significant differences between the groups in medication compliance, self-efficacy or satisfaction with care. The abstract of this article (the full article is by subscription) does not tell us if there were differences between the patients in the telephone contact intevention group and the group that used videoconferencing – or what other monitoring equipment was used. Nor does it indicate why 26% dropped out of the study over six months. If you have access to the article, perhaps you will comment and let us know.
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Outcomes of a home telehealth intervention for patients with heart failure
This study in the US, whilst interesting lacks both power in numbers and duration for the natural history of heart failure problems.
The methodology used was not likely to impact on patient care as interventions depended on weekly interviews with collection of retrospective and subjective information about the patient’s perception of their progress. There was no collection of physiological data (i.e objective measures of outcome) and hence no ability to track trends such as weight gain, blood pressure, pulse rate etc.
It was time consuming for the type of information to be collected (34-37 minutes) compared with data entry on home monitors (3-5 minutes twice daily) and labour intensive to analyse.
Let’s hope the ‘Whole System Demonstrators’ in the UK are powered enough to give some answers about ‘telemedicine’.