Technology is fascinating and an ever growing aspect of medical management in Chronic Disease, especially based on established and currently expanding technologies for Congestive Heart Failure.Research supports that the earlier an episode of decompensated Heart Failure can be identified, the sooner actions can be undertaken to impact patient’s status. This leads to potential positive outcomes regarding hospitalization rates thus prompting medical cost savings and improved patient quality of life.
Established technologies can track basic vital signs as well as provide a variable review of symptoms which can impacted by mood, energy level or mentation; while some of the up and coming technologies can bring into perspective additional objective functional data. Despite all these technological advances, there still lies the human factor. There are Heart Failure self-management areas that are not addressed in current and upcoming technology efforts that impact morbidity, quality of life and mortality. Dietary sodium intake and daily fluid control as well as medication management can pose a challenge and source of frustration to patient’s with Heart Failure. Coordinating patient self-management efforts and interfacing them with objective efforts obtained through the use of technology, results in a more complete reflection of the patient’s overall health.
As humans, we earn by learn seeing, feeling and doing. Over time, there could be a positive impact on the their self-management decisions regarding diet, fluid and medications if patients can visualize the impact of these combined factors. The Goal is to have an App for a cell phone, tablet or a watch style device which would record the patient’s self-management efforts and interface daily with the data being collected by technological device.
The device can use a scan QR code/barcode method to assist in both diet and medication self-management. As foods are scanned, the amount of sodium per serving will come up. To increase the “visibility of the choice”, The patient can adjust the serving size and will be given an object to compare an equivalent portion size. For example ,3 ounce of meat is size of a deck of cards. Another visual cue is that the total mgs of sodium in food serving can be converted to a color coded system. Green for go, Yellow for use caution or Red for stop and think . A salt shaker icon will tally the amount of sodium on a daily basis or can be divided by a per meal basis. Daily fluid intake can also be tallied incorporating the visuals to aid patients in pacing fluid intake.
Medication management can be enhanced by using a scanning system to importing patients’ medications directly into the system.A comprehensive medication list can be generated to be shared with providers by the patient. A medication tracking system with an optional reminder feature can be incorporated. Using this technology, prn medications can be added in potential real time to identify medications which can impact volume status such as prednisone tapers, NSAIDS, etc.
People learn not only from listening, but also by seeing and doing. Combining patient driven management elements with technological heart failure monitoring efforts will address risk factors that current technology cannot directly impact. It can truly make management if Heart Failure a T.E.A.M.S. effort!
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