Home Monitoring for Implantable Devices: New Technology & New Service

Abstract

The use and need for follow-up of cardiac electronic implantable devices, such as pacemakers and implantable defibrillators, is constantly increasing, and constitutes an ever-growing burden and cost in clinical practice and the health system in general. Telemedicine or remote, wireless home monitoring (HM) has recently come to aid in this situation and reliably retrieve information on the patient`s and device`s status and transmit it to the implanting center and physician. It thus offers considerable convenience and assurance to both patient and physician. To date this technology of remote monitoring allows continuous and episode related arrhythmia monitoring as well as continuous monitoring of the status of the implanted system (battery status, lead impedance). Preliminary data from ongoing large multicenter studies are promising and relate to the diagnostic power of telemetrically transmitted data, necessity for patient follow up, the influence of HM on the optimisation of device and medical therapy, and the impact of HM on cost- effectiveness in device therapy.