TY - JOUR
T1 - Voice activated remote monitoring technology for heart failure patients
T2 - Study design, feasibility and observations from a pilot randomized control trial
AU - Shara, Nawar
AU - Bjarnadottir, Margret V.
AU - Falah, Noor
AU - Chou, Jiling
AU - Alqutri, Hasan S.
AU - Asch, Federico M.
AU - Anderson, Kelley M.
AU - Bennett, Sonita S.
AU - Kuhn, Alexander
AU - Montalvo, Becky
AU - Sanchez, Osirelis
AU - Loveland, Amy
AU - Mohammed, Selma F.
N1 - Funding Information:
Initials of the authors who received each award: NS Grant numbers awarded to each author: UL1TR001409 The full name of each funder: National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS)/ NIH URL of each funder website. https://ncats.nih.gov/ The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 Shara et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
PY - 2022/5
Y1 - 2022/5
N2 - Background Heart failure (HF) is a serious health condition, associated with high health care costs, and poor outcomes. Patient empowerment and self-care are a key component of successful HF management. The emergence of telehealth may enable providers to remotely monitor patients’ statuses, support adherence to medical guidelines, improve patient wellbeing, and promote daily awareness of overall patients’ health. Objective To assess the feasibility of a voice activated technology for monitoring of HF patients, and its impact on HF clinical outcomes and health care utilization. Methods We conducted a randomized clinical trial; ambulatory HF patients were randomized to voice activated technology or standard of care (SOC) for 90 days. The system developed for this study monitored patient symptoms using a daily survey and alerted healthcare providers of pre-determined reported symptoms of worsening HF. We used summary statistics and descriptive visualizations to study the alerts generated by the technology and to healthcare utilization outcomes. Results The average age of patients was 54 years, the majority were Black and 45% were women. Almost all participants had an annual income below $50,000. Baseline characteristics were not statistically significantly different between the two arms. The technical infrastructure was successfully set up and two thirds of the invited study participants interacted with the technology. Patients reported favorable perception and high comfort level with the use of voice activated technology. The responses from the participants varied widely and higher perceived symptom burden was not associated with hospitalization on qualitative assessment of the data visualization plot. Among patients randomized to the voice activated technology arm, there was one HF emergency department (ED) visit and 2 HF hospitalizations; there were no events in the SOC arm. Conclusions This study demonstrates the feasibility of remote symptom monitoring of HF patients using voice activated technology. The varying HF severity and the wide range of patient responses to the technology indicate that personalized technological approaches are needed to capture the full benefit of the technology. The differences in health care utilization between the two arms call for further study into the impact of remote monitoring on health care utilization and patients’ wellbeing.
AB - Background Heart failure (HF) is a serious health condition, associated with high health care costs, and poor outcomes. Patient empowerment and self-care are a key component of successful HF management. The emergence of telehealth may enable providers to remotely monitor patients’ statuses, support adherence to medical guidelines, improve patient wellbeing, and promote daily awareness of overall patients’ health. Objective To assess the feasibility of a voice activated technology for monitoring of HF patients, and its impact on HF clinical outcomes and health care utilization. Methods We conducted a randomized clinical trial; ambulatory HF patients were randomized to voice activated technology or standard of care (SOC) for 90 days. The system developed for this study monitored patient symptoms using a daily survey and alerted healthcare providers of pre-determined reported symptoms of worsening HF. We used summary statistics and descriptive visualizations to study the alerts generated by the technology and to healthcare utilization outcomes. Results The average age of patients was 54 years, the majority were Black and 45% were women. Almost all participants had an annual income below $50,000. Baseline characteristics were not statistically significantly different between the two arms. The technical infrastructure was successfully set up and two thirds of the invited study participants interacted with the technology. Patients reported favorable perception and high comfort level with the use of voice activated technology. The responses from the participants varied widely and higher perceived symptom burden was not associated with hospitalization on qualitative assessment of the data visualization plot. Among patients randomized to the voice activated technology arm, there was one HF emergency department (ED) visit and 2 HF hospitalizations; there were no events in the SOC arm. Conclusions This study demonstrates the feasibility of remote symptom monitoring of HF patients using voice activated technology. The varying HF severity and the wide range of patient responses to the technology indicate that personalized technological approaches are needed to capture the full benefit of the technology. The differences in health care utilization between the two arms call for further study into the impact of remote monitoring on health care utilization and patients’ wellbeing.
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U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0267794
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0267794
M3 - Article
C2 - 35522660
AN - SCOPUS:85129713766
VL - 17
JO - PLoS One
JF - PLoS One
SN - 1932-6203
IS - 5 May
M1 - e0267794
ER -