Mobile Health Tech May Enhance Heart Failure Care
Compared with usual care, the use of a mobile health technology that integrates telemonitoring and teleintervention during the vulnerable post-discharge period led to a reduction in the risk for new fatal and non-fatal cardiovascular events in patients recently hospitalised for heart failure (HF) decompensation.
METHODOLOGY:
Researchers conducted a randomised, phase 3, multicentre trial in Spain to assess the efficacy of a non-invasive mobile health service in post-discharge HF care.
They included 506 adult patients (mean age, 73 years; 41% women) hospitalised for HF decompensation who were either recently discharged (within the past 30 days) or in the process of discharge planning.
After discharge, patients were randomly assigned to receive either mobile health service comprising telemonitoring and preplanned structured healthcare follow-up via videoconference (n = 255) or usual care involving face-to-face visits (n = 251) between May 2018 and April 2022.
Usual care followed the HF care framework of each centre and included a nurse-led educational programme on daily monitoring of biomedical data. The mobile health group received care on the basis of their daily biometric data, reported through a smartphone app connected to medical devices.
The primary outcome was a composite of cardiovascular death or worsening HF events during the follow-up duration of 6 months.
TAKEAWAY:
Participants in the mobile health group had a 65% lower risk for the first event of the composite outcome — cardiovascular death or worsening HF events — than those in the usual care group (hazard ratio, 0.35; P < .0001).
< .0001). The risk for a first event of worsening HF was 70% lower ( P < .0001) and that of cardiovascular death was 54% lower ( P = .047) in participants allotted to the mobile health group.
< .0001) and that of cardiovascular death was 54% lower ( = .047) in participants allotted to the mobile health group. Compared with the usual care group, the mobile health group had a lower risk for non-fatal events and fewer occurrences of all-cause mortality and cardiovascular hospitalisations and showed improvements in self-care and quality of life.
No spontaneously reported harms were reported in either of the groups.
IN PRACTICE:
"Integration of an eHealth [electronic health]-based solution into usual health-care systems and provision of a user-friendly interface for patients to promote adherence and persistence are two key aspects that likely contributed to the efficacy of mHealth [mobile health] in this trial," the authors wrote.
SOURCE:
This study was led by Sergi Yun, MD, and Josep Comín-Colet, PhD, Bellvitge Biomedical Research Institute, L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, Barcelona, Spain. It was published online on May 14, 2025, in The Lancet Digital Health .
LIMITATIONS:
Data related to ethnicity of the patients were not recorded. The protocol allowed for local variations in standard care at each centre, which may have contributed to differences in data.
DISCLOSURES:
This trial received an unrestricted grant from Novartis. The authors declared having no competing interests.
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