Remote monitoring

Objective: The COVID-19 pandemic has brought about a major upheaval in the lives of older adults and their family/friend caregivers, including those utilizing home care services. In this article, we focus on results from a qualitative component added to a pragmatic randomized controlled trial that focuses on the experiences of our study participants during COVID-19.

The impact of informal care immediately after pacemaker (PM) implantation has been well established; however, not much is known about its long-term effects. The present study compared personal characteristics, associated problems, workloads, time, and costs related to informal care provided to patients with PM under remote monitoring (RM) vs. conventional monitoring (CM) in the hospital, five years after implantation. The PONIENTE study was a controlled, non-randomized or masked clinical trial conducted with information obtained from the perspective of informal caregivers.

Long-term conditions have a negative effect on the lives of older people and those who care for them. As the population ages, so the prevalence of long-term conditions increases, which presents substantial challenges to providers of health and social care. This article examines how telemonitoring could help to meet some of these challenges. Telemonitoring involves patients at home recording vital signs, for example, blood pressure and pulse, and transmitting this information electronically to nurses based elsewhere.