Home telemonitoring of chronic heart failure patients: novel system architecture of the home or hospital in heart failure study

The HHH (home or hospital in heart failure) study is a European Community multicenter trial aimed at assessing in a population of chronic heart failure patients 3 incremental home telemonitoring strategies against usual clinical practice. End points are rehospitalization, quality of life, mortality and cost-efficacy. Easy accessibility by the patient and low management costs are the two basic criteria that have guided the design of the architecture of the HHH telemonitoring system. Voice messages, vital signs and long-term cardiorespiratory data are periodically transmitted by the patients at home to a centralized interactive voice response system shared by several hospitals. From there, relevant data are automatically routed to the pertaining medical staff. The HHH technical infrastructure has been completed and tested in the 3 countries involved in the study and enrolment is in progress. Preliminary results on the feasibility of the HHH telemonitoring model are available.