One Heart to Care for, Your Heart to Take Care of.
One Heart to Care for, Your Heart to Take Care of.
This is an open randomized clinical trial with two study arms. One group, receiving usual care for heart failure, will be compared to another group, receiving usual care plus active telemonitoring interference.
When leaving the hospital, the usual care arm receives a document with a predefined medication scheme and advice for the general practitioner (like it is currently done in usual care). Besides the normal consultations at 2 and 5 weeks, no active interactions take place between the study nurse and the patient.
The telemonitoring interference in the other study arm consists of an automatic blood pressure device and medication dispenser that transmit data to a central platform. During the first 12 weeks, the nurse of the call center will give incentive for medication up titration on the basis of the available data. Before up titration can be done, the patient needs to take blood pressure measurements 3 times in the morning and 3 times in the evening and at least 6 measurements a week.
Inclusion Criteria:
- Age ≥ 50
Patient has to be followed in Ziekenhuis Oost-Limburg or Jessa Ziekenhuis Hasselt
The patient has to be able to live independently or in a service flat
The diagnosis of heart failure or severe myocardial infarction has to be done after September 1, 2013 according to:
The general practitioner had to give his approval for the installation of telemonitoring On the basis of an interview between the heart failure nurse and patient, one will decide if the patient is eligibil to join the study. The patient also needs to speak sufficient Dutch to be communicative about his/her medical condition.
Exclusion Criteria: