Yale Studies 3 Different Telehealth, mHealth Tools for Cardiac Care

By Eric Wicklund

October 15, 2020 - Researchers at Yale University are launching a connected health study that will analyze three different telehealth and mHealth platforms for treating patients living with heart failure.

The Yale School of Medicine’s Clinical and Translational Research Accelerator (CTRA) is partnering with pharma company Boehringer Ingelheim on the study, which will use the Bodyport smart scale with enhanced cardiac monitoring, Noom’s personalized mHealth coaching app and a chatbot platform developed by Conversa.

“Our digital health study … will move beyond evaluating if these tools work and establish if they actually help make patients’ lives better, which is how these technologies should be judged,” F. Perry Wilson, MD, an associate professor of medicine at Yale, said in a press release. “The health of heart failure patients can change quickly, and these tools can help healthcare providers intervene before serious complications lead to hospitalizations, alleviating our overburdened healthcare system. We hope this study sets a new standard for how these digital tools are evaluated.”

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“We launched this study with Yale to help identify how digital health technology may address some of the key pain points for adults with heart failure, like the need for more frequent communication with healthcare providers in between visits and coaching to help with the daily management of the condition,” added Christine Marsh, Boehringer Ingelheim’s senior vice president of market access.

The study aims to identify how different telehealth and mHealth tools can help providers manage care at home for patients living with heart failure, which affects roughly 6 million people and cause roughly 1 million hospitalizations each year.

It also tackles a gap in care exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic. Studies have estimated that more than half the people living with heart failure have either had problems accessing care during the COVID-19 crisis or are skipping routine check-ups and other services. In response, providers are looking at remote patient monitoring programs to bring care management to them.

The six-month study will randomly assign one of the three products or a typical care program to roughly 200 participants drawn from the Yale Heart Failure Disease Management Clinic. Each of the platforms will be measured against the standard of care, rather than each other.

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Yale Studies 3 Different Telehealth, mHealth Tools for Cardiac Care

Yale University's Clinical and Translational Research Accelerator is launching a 6-month study on the value of three different connected health platforms for managing patients living with heart failure.

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