Continuous, Real-Time, Tele-monitoring of Patients with Chronic Heart-Failure - Lessons Learned From a Pilot Study

We present a smartphone-based system for remote real-time tele-monitoring of physical activity in patients with chronic heart-failure (CHF). We recently completed a pilot study with 15 subjects to evaluate the feasibility of the proposed monitoring in the real world and examine its requirements, privacy implications, usability, and other challenges encountered by the participants and healthcare providers. Our tele-monitoring system was designed to asses patient activity via minute-by-minute energy expenditure (EE) estimated from accelerometry. In addition, we tracked relative user location via global positioning system (GPS) to track outdoors activity and measure walking distance. The system also administered daily-surveys to inquire about vital signs and general cardiovascular symptoms. The collected data were securely transmitted to a central server where they were analyzed in real time and were accessible to the study medical staff to assess patients' health status and provide medical intervention if needed. Although the system was designed for tele-monitoring individuals with CHF, the challenges, privacy considerations, and lessons learned from this pilot study apply to other chronic health conditions that would benefit from continuous monitoring through mobile-health (mHealth) technologies, such as diabetes and hypertension.