Attitudes of heart failure patients and health care providers towards mobile phone-based remote monitoring.
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Date
2010-11-30
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Abstract
BACKGROUND Mobile phone based remote patient monitoring systems have been proposed for heart failure management because they are relatively inexpensive and enable patients to be monitored anywhere However little is known about whether patients and their health care providers are willing and able to use this technology OBJECTIVE The objective of our study was to assess the attitudes of heart failure patients and their health care providers from a heart function clinic in a large urban teaching hospital toward the use of mobile phone based remote monitoring METHODS A questionnaire regarding attitudes toward home monitoring and technology was administered to 100 heart failure patients 94 100 returned a completed questionnaire Semi structured interviews were also conducted with 20 heart failure patients and 16 clinicians to determine the perceived benefits and barriers to using mobile phone based remote monitoring as well as their willingness and ability to use the technology RESULTS The survey results indicated that the patients were very comfortable using mobile phones mean rating 4 5 SD 0 6 on a five point Likert scale even more so than with using computers mean 4 1 SD 1 1 The difference in comfort level between mobile phones and computers was statistically significant PUnder 001 Patients were also confident in using mobile phones to view health information mean 4 4 SD 0 9 Patients and clinicians were willing to use the system as long as several conditions were met including providing a system that was easy to use with clear tangible benefits maintaining good patient provider communication and not increasing clinical workload Clinicians cited several barriers to implementation of such a system including lack of remuneration for telephone interactions with patients and medicolegal implications CONCLUSIONS Patients and clinicians want to use mobile phone based remote monitoring and believe that they would be able to use the technology However they have several reservations such as potential increased clinical workload medicolegal issues and difficulty of use for some patients due to lack of visual acuity or manual dexterity
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Keywords
Addressing individual beliefs and practices, Unnecessary referrals and transportation, Expenses related to service delivery, Pre-prototype, Feasibility, Cardiovascular disease, Chronic care, Disease management, Physiologic Biosensors