Posted at: 10/27/2009 7:18 PM
By: Axel Gumbel

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Medical Edge: Home Heart Device

(ABC 6 NEWS) -- 25 billion dollars; that's how much money is spent every year on patients with heart failure in the United States.

Most of that money is for on hospital visits.

But now, clinicians and researchers at the Mayo Clinic are hoping to change that.

This could mean a big break for heart patients.

Mayo researchers are testing a new device that can monitor patients at home in hopes of keeping them healthier and out of the hospital longer.

Heart failure patient Clive Kells says this small monitoring device taped to his chest is like a security system for his health.

"You have somebody right there by you all the time," says Clive Kells.
  
"I like to think about it as sort of like a guardian angel," says Mayo Clinic Dr. Charles Bruce.

Dr. Charles Bruce and colleagues have teamed up with engineers at mayo clinic to design a monitor that will help prevent patients like Clive from having complications that could put him in the hospital.

They're currently testing the monitor in the hospital, but in the next phase of study, patients will wear it in their home.

The technology monitors things like heart rate, blood pressure, activity levels and breathing.

"All those parameters will help us to see if the condition of a congestive heart failure patient worsens," says project manager Christian Milaster.

It works sort of like the system check in your car. The computer monitors the engine constantly and if there is a problem, it lets you know.

In the same way, the device monitors the patient continuously and sends information to a location where trained technicians assess the data.

"Depending on that input we can determine whether the patient needs to see their physician. Or maybe we'd up their medications to try to prevent them from having to come in to the hospital in the first place," says Bruce.

The technology is also interactive. If the monitor senses, say, increased heart rate, it asks Clive about symptoms and sends that info in too. The technology acts as a home health security check to prevent bad events from happening.

Right now Dr. Bruce and his team are using the device for congestive heart failure patients only.

But in the future the goal is to be able to monitor more to hopefully prevent illness, reduce the need for hospital visits and cut costs.