What is Home Monitoring and how does it work?
The term "Home Monitoring" means exactly what it implies, monitoring your heart and implanted cardiac device from your home. Your pacemaker, ICD and Loop recorder use a special transmitter [home monitor] to automatically send medical and technical information for your heart to your Doctor. The home monitor device is plugged in at home, usually next to your bed, it sends information from the device in your chest to Rhythm Insight via your home monitoring doctors group. Home monitoring allows your specialist to see how your device is behaving, check the battery status and monitor any changes in your heart rhythm This allows up to date clinical information to be accessed timely and efficiently from your home and can reduce the need for in clinic follow up each year. The home monitor uses a secure server, ensuring the integrity and safety of the transmitted data. Overall, If you have an implantable medical device, remote monitoring allows your healthcare team to monitor your heart health and the function of your cardiac device without you having to be physically present. Rhythm Insight is a 24/7 remote alert management system. Once set up, the wireless remote monitor will check your implanted device upon scheduled intervals and/or alerts.
Benefits of Remote Monitoring
- Enables your device to perform self-checks from the comfort of your home, transmitting device data and clinically significant heart rhythm information for review by your Cardiologist.
- Having quick access to your device data, your Cardiologist can discover previously unknown or asymptomatic arrhythmias within days of their occurrence, potentially preventing adverse events, such as stroke.
- Enables monitoring of the integrity of the leads and device battery and circuitry, so should a problem arise, early detection and intervention is possible.
- Ensures optimal device function to suit your personal need.
- Less time spent travelling to clinic appointments as a remote check may replace some in-clinic visits.
- Research evidence has shown that early detection of issues through remote monitoring leads to improved health outcomes and a reduced risk of hospital admission.
"In patients with a cardiac implantable electronic device (CIED), remote monitoring is a powerful tool for assessing patients without requiring an office visit. For patients who are already followed by remote monitoring who have no other active ongoing conditions or drug therapies that require in-person evaluation, healthcare providers should strongly consider replacing routine office visits with a remote visit (video, telephone, remote monitoring of CIED, etc.). For patients who are not currently enrolled in remote monitoring, new enrollment should be considered"