Five year study shows lower hospitalisations with remote cardiac monitoring-St Jude Medical

St. Jude Medical, Inc., a global medical device company, announced that data presented during a Late Breaking Clinical Trial Session during Heart Rhythm 2015, the Heart Rhythm Society's Annual Scientific Sessions, found that patients with cardiac devices who use remote monitoring have significantly fewer hospitalizations and lower overall healthcare costs than patients who do not use or adhere with the technology. The findings were a result of a five-year study, one of the largest to date on remote monitoring technologies.

The study, which obtained data from a real-world setting, reinforces the important role of remote monitoring in improving the overall care of patients treated with implantable cardiac devices. Researchers analyzed data from more than 90,000 patients with pacemakers, implantable cardioverter defibrillators (ICDs), and cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) devices. The data showed that remote monitoring with systems, such as the St. Jude Medical Merlin.net Patient Care Network (PCN), eliminates 10 hospitalizations and 119 hospital days and resulted in cost savings of more than $370,000 per 100 patients annually.

Comment:Patients with high adherence to remote monitoring had 2.4 times the probability of survival as patients without remote monitoring. That was defined as the conduction of at least 75% of the time of weekly transmissions of patient data from the patient transmitter to the network.

Comment: The St Jude Merlin.net Patient Care Network was FDA approved in 2013 and received CE Mark in April 2009.