Remote Patient Monitoring in Heart Failure: Factors for Clinical Efficacy

Despite clinical advances in its treatment, heart failure (HF) is associated with significant adverse clinical outcomes and is among the greatest drivers of healthcare utilization. Outpatient management of HF remains suboptimal, with gaps in the provision of evidence-based therapies, and difficulties in predicting and managing clinical decompensation. Remote patient monitoring (RPM) has the potential to address these issues, and thus has been of increasing interest to HF clinicians and health systems. Economic incentives, including increasing RPM reimbursement and HF readmission penalties, are also spurring increased interest in RPM. This review establishes a framework for evaluating RPM based on its various components: 1) patient data collection, 2) data transmission, analysis, and presentation, and 3) care team review and clinical action. The existing evidence regarding RPM in HF management is also reviewed. Based on the data, we identify RPM features associated with clinical efficacy and describe emerging digital tools that have the promise of addressing current needs.