A new simple multimodal platform for home monitoring of cardiac patients through textile technology

In the developed countries, healthcare systems are evolving under the pressure of the population ageing, the necessity of reducing the increasing healthcare costs and the availability of new technologies. Telemedicine and eHealth solutions are gaining importance in this reference frame. Recently we participated in the final validation phase of a wide European Project, Heartfaid, aimed at building an eHealth platform for the remote monitoring and management of patients suffering from chronic heart failure. In this context, we designed and developed a simple multimodal subsystem for the home acquisition and transmission of data collected from the patients, composed of a vest embedding textile electrodes, a touchscreen computer and a UMTS dongle. In this paper we report the results of this experience where we explored the usability of such a simplified interface for home monitoring of cardiac patients.