Innovative Telemonitoring Enhanced Care program for CHF (ITEC-CHF): Usability and Patient Perspectives (Preprint)

BACKGROUND Telemonitoring enables care providers to remotely support outpatients in self-managing chronic heart failure (CHF), but little is known about usability and patients’ willingness to engage with this technology. OBJECTIVE To evaluate patients’ feedback following participation in the Innovative Telemonitoring Enhanced Care program for CHF (ITEC-CHF) study. METHODS Survey feedback on the usability of ITEC-CHF was collected in participants following 6 months of telemonitoring of their body weight. Responses were provided on a five-point Likert-scale and through and open-ended questions to determine the perceived benefits and barriers to using ITEC-CHF. RESULTS Sixty seven participants (73% male), aged 69.8 ± 12.4 years completed the survey. The majority of participants agreed or strongly agreed that the ITEC-CHF program was easy to use (91%), easy to navigate (78%), useful (91%), and made them feel more confident in managing their weight (85%). Themes related to participants’ perceptions of telemonitoring included: (1) increased support for early intervention of clinical deterioration; (2) improved compliance with daily weighing; (3) a sense of reassurance; (4) improved self-care and accountability. CONCLUSIONS ITEC-CHF was rated highly on usability and was well accepted by users as part of their routine self-management activities. Participants were willing to use telemonitoring because they perceived a broad spectrum of benefits for CHF management. CLINICALTRIAL This study complies with the Declaration of Helsinki. The clinical trial protocol was approved by the Health Human Research Ethics Committee in Victoria (HREC Reference: HREC/14/PH/27), and Western Australia (Reference: 15-081, and Reference: HR 181/2014), Australia. The trial was registered with Australian New Zealand Clinical Trial Registry (Trial ID: ACTRN 12614000916640; https://www.anzctr.org.au/Trial/Registration/TrialReview.aspx?id=366691). Informed consent was obtained from the participants in the trial.