Remote monitoring of vital signs in patients with Chronic Heart Failure: Sensor devices and data analysis perspective

Nowadays Chronic Heart Failure (CHF) represents one of the leading causes of hospital admission among chronic diseases, especially for elderly citizens. Monitoring of vital signs, performed at patients´ home, has been identified by physicians and administrators as an important strategy to early detect and treat the alterations in vital signs that precede the acute syndromes, in order to reduce the number of consequent hospitalizations and related costs. A basic set of relevant vital parameters consists of ECG, SpO2, Blood Pressure and Weight, acquired in non-invasive fashion and processed both in threshold comparisons and for trends extraction. This paper describes, from the sensors and data processing perspective, a complete and integrated ICT solution to improve the provisioning of healthcare service for CHF patients able to connect in-hospital care of acute phase with out-of-hospital follow-up.