A new solution for a Heart Failure Monitoring system based on Wearable and Information Technologies

Cardiovascular diseases (CVD) are the leading source of death in the western world and in particular, in Europe CVD cause 45% of all deaths. Besides, heart failure (HF), the paradigm of CVD, affects mainly people older than 65. Facing this reality, the European Union funded MyHeart Project, whose mission is empowering citizens to fight CVD by means of a preventive lifestyle and an early diagnosis. This paper presents an innovative integrated solution for the assessment of heart failure: HF management (HFM). HFM is a heart failure disease management system that makes use of innovative approaches, based on information technologies (IT) and wearable technologies, for the continuous assessment of HF progression and cardiovascular risk stratification. By integrating patient data from different sources with special emphasis in the information obtained from extensive ECG processing the system assesses the patient's cardiac condition. Rather than just merely evaluating the cardiovascular status, HFM is designed to motivate patients to acquire an active role in their health management and to help them to improve their cardiac condition by promoting physical exercise.