ESC Journals
Remote monitoring (RM) is the standard of care for follow up of patients with cardiac implantable electronic devices. The aim of this study was to compare smartphone-based RM (SM-RM) using patient applications (myMerlinPulse™ app) with traditional bedside monitor RM (BM-RM).
The retrospective study included de-identified US patients who received either SM-RM or BM-RM capable of implantable cardioverter defibrillators or cardiac resynchronization therapy defibrillators (Abbott, USA). Patients in SM-RM and BM-RM groups were propensity-score matched on age and gender, device type, implant year, and month. Compliance with RM was quantified as the proportion of patients enrolling in the RM system (Merlin.net™) and transmitting data at least once. Connectivity was measured by the median number of days between consecutive transmissions per patient. Of the initial 9714 patients with SM-RM and 26 679 patients with BM-RM, 9397 patients from each group were matched. Remote monitoring compliance was higher in SM-RM; significantly more patients with SM-RM were enrolled in RM compared with BM-RM (94.4 vs. 85.0%,
In this large real-world study, patients with SM-RM demonstrated improved compliance and connectivity compared with BM-RM.