Remote monitoring is becoming more popular among hospitals, but the question is whether these monitors are actually useful. Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) set out to answer that, and their findings weren’t very promising.

“We think one factor that affected the results is adherence,” Dr. Michael Ong, associate professor of medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, told HCB News. “There is a big difference if you even participate at least half the time with the intervention — with those who do so having significantly lower rates of hospital readmission and mortality.”

Ong and his team enrolled 1437 patients from UCLA, UC Davis, UC Irvine, UC San Diego, UC San Francisco and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center into the study and randomly placed them in two groups. One of the groups received self-management health coaching, a Bluetooth scale, Bluetooth blood pressure/text message device and a transmission pod and the control group received standard care.

The first group was monitored daily by a nurse call center and if the measurements were either too high or low, the patients were contacted to figure out what the problem was and whether they needed to be sent to their health care providers or the emergency department. They received the health coaching on a weekly basis for the first month and then monthly over the course of six months.

The researchers found that the remote monitoring and health coaching did not reduce the amount of hospital readmissions over the course of 180 days for heart failure patients. It also didn’t have significant effects on 30-day hospital readmissions, 30-mortality or 180-day mortality.

Ong and his team concluded that the use of remote monitoring to reduce hospital readmission is not yet ready for widespread adoption. The major issue is lack of adherence to using these technologies, but that seems to be slowly improving.

Ong noted that remote monitoring technology has improved since the Better Effectiveness After Transition—Heart Failure (BEAT-HF) study was initiated in 2011, which compared the effects of implementing wireless remote monitoring and structured telephone monitoring versus standard care among six medical centers.

“When we started the study, iPads were just coming out,” said Ong. “Remote devices can now be integrated with smartphone and tablet applications.”

There are also less obtrusive mechanisms to monitor patients and that might improve adherence as well. “As patients and providers also get more used to using these types of technologies, adherence may also improve,” added Ong.

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