CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

In the last years, multidisciplinary post-discharge treatment programs, such as telemonitoring, have been promoted as a strategy for Heart Failure (HF) management. However, the distinctive requirements that a telemonitoring system should have, have not been clearly identified. To this aim, the most relevant requirements for telemonitoring of HF patients are derived from evidence-based Clinical Practice Guidelines (CPGs) for HF management. The main objective of this work is to present a prototype of a telemonitoring system for HF patients, named SiTe iC, that has been developed based on the identified requirements, highlighting its design and evaluation.A first prototype of the system was designed and programmed. It consists of an mHealth app for HF patients, a website for physicians who monitor patients, and a server which runs an Application Programming Interface to allow communication between the app and the website.The system was thoroughly assessed through a clinical trial that demonstrates that telemonitoring using SiTe iC actually improves patients self-care when compared to usual care and it has the potential to avoid patient re-hospitalizations.This study demonstrated that the identified functional requirements for telemonitoring systems are relevant. In addition, thanks to SiTe iC, HF patients would take a more active role in their disease management by improving self-care.