title: Home telemonitoring for congestive heart failure: a systematic review and meta-analysis.
abstract: We conducted a systematic review of the literature about home telemonitoring compared with usual care. An electronic literature search was conducted to identify studies of home telemonitoring use in congestive heart failure (CHF) patients. Twenty-one original studies on home telemonitoring for patients with CHF were included (3082 patients). A random effects model was used to compute treatment efficacy to measure the average effect of the intervention across all studies where the quantitative pooling of results was appropriate. Home telemonitoring reduced mortality (risk ratio = 0.64; 95% CI: 0.48-0.85) compared with usual care. Several studies suggested that home telemonitoring also helped to lower the number of hospitalizations and the use of other health services. Patient quality of life and satisfaction with home telemonitoring were similar or better than with usual care. More studies of higher methodological quality are required to give more precise information about the potential clinical effectiveness of home telehealth interventions.
authors.affiliation: Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. juliep@cadth.ca
authors.forename: Julie
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Polisena
authors.forename: Khai
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Tran
authors.forename: Karen
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Cimon
authors.forename: Brian
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Hutton
authors.forename: Sarah
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: McGill
authors.forename: Krisan
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Palmer
authors.forename: Richard E
authors.initials: RE
authors.lastname: Scott
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D006333:Heart Failure / Q000401:mortality / Q000628:therapy*; D006699:Home Care Services / Q000458:organization & administration*; D006760:Hospitalization / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D006801:Humans; D008875:Middle Aged; D017060:Patient Satisfaction; D011788:Quality of Life; D016032:Randomized Controlled Trials as Topic; D017216:Telemedicine / Q000458:organization & administration* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data