Weather influence on alarm occurrence in home telemonitoring of heart failure patients

The study investigated weather influences on occurrence of alarm conditions among heart failure patients subjected to home telemonitoring. The telemonitored patients were located in the vicinities of five Austrian cities: Vienna, Graz, Innsbruck, Klagenfurt and Linz. The associated daily weather conditions were obtained from the Austrian Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics. The investigations included correlations between patient´s vital signs: systolic and diastolic blood pressure, heart rate, and weight, and weather conditions: air temperature, humidity and atmospheric pressure. GNU-R statistical software was used for the analysis. The results show statistically significant differences in measured blood pressure between the days with high thermal stress, particularly with falling temperatures, cold stress days. At the same time, blood pressure was associated with the highest number of patient alarm conditions requiring medical response. Including weather data within the home telemonitoring alarm generation systems offers potential for enhancing decision support towards prevention or minimization of the occurrence of adverse events.