Decision support system for the practical implementation of the Chronic Heart Failure guidelines: The MyHeart approach

Chronic Heart Failure (CHF) is the major cause for hospitalization in adults in western societies, mainly due to decompensation of patients. Active prevention, diagnosis, and personalized treatment contribute to the stabilization of chronic patients and the reduction of events. The approach of the EU FP6 MyHeart project is to collect daily vital body signs on CHF patients in an easy and comfortable way. The data is processed via a decision support system (DSS) and the platform gives instant recommendations to the user. The system also sends the information to the professionals for a better follow-up. The designed DSS is based on Bayesian networks (BN) and combines the accepted standardized clinical guidelines with the most advanced monitoring data in daily routine, in order to provide individualized recommendations to the patient in a concrete situation.