Home HealthCare Telemonitoring System for “Medication Titration” in the Treatment of Heart Failure: Architecture for an Interoperable Solution

Abstract

Heart failure is a common condition in which the heart is unable to keep up with its workload. Therefore, oxygen and nutrients are no longer able to reach the cardiac cells, which worsens the situation of the whole heart. Treating an HF patient is challenging due to the co-morbidities and the numerous medications associated with the treatment. Medical dosage through titration of ACE inhibitors (ACEIs), Angiotensin receptor blockers (ARBs), beta-blockers and other drugs is a recommended procedure to reduce morbidity and mortality in HF patients. However, the procedure is performed under medical supervision at the hospital, lasting from one to four weeks. We propose a telemonitoring system to help clinicians to follow the patient through the Medication Titration procedure at home. We used commercial medical devices, certified on international communication standards to assure interoperability. Independently of the producer or brand, they can operate properly in the designed architecture. So far, we are able to connect two medical devices, blood pressure meter and weight scale, to a data hub. Then the data is rerouted to the cloud, where information is stored in a database. We use a commercial application to visualize the data through a friendly graphical interface.