Consider this: Patients who experienced a heart attack use a digital health program consisting of an app integrated with a smartwatch and wireless blood pressure monitor. Would they have lower risk of 30-day hospital readmissions? Yes: According to a recent study called Myocardial infarction, Combined Device, Recovery Enhancement (MiCORE), they would have a 52% lower risk of hospital readmission.
“We found that if you engage patients frequently on what they need to do to take care of themselves, they get really pumped up to do so,” said Francoise Marvel, assistant professor in the Division of Cardiology and co-director of the Johns Hopkins Digital Health Lab at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
In fact, patients used the app a median of 213 times during the 30-day period. That included tracking medications, entering vital signs like weight and blood pressure, and viewing educational content.
With standard practices to prepare patients to leave the hospital, like providing them with paper-based discharge instructions, clinicians can’t easily track how engaged people are with self-care instructions after a heart attack, according to Erin Spaulding from the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing and co-first author of the MiCORE report. “The app provided insights into how a patient was doing and how engaged they were after leaving the hospital,” she says.
Seth Martin, associate professor in the Division of Cardiology and co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Mobile Technologies to Achieve Equity in Cardiovascular Health and the Digital Health Lab at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, says the team is creating a computer dashboard for clinicians to access patients’ key cardiovascular metrics in real time as part of a virtual cardiac rehab program that could be used to better inform in-person visits.
“Providing more than just a day or a snapshot of data, you get a fuller picture of someone’s daily life,” says Martin. “This can enhance patient and clinician collaboration in improving their health.”
Read the full story here: Study Shows Use of Smartphone App Associated with Lower Hospital Readmission Rates for Heart Attack Survivors.
The app technology was licensed through Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures to Corrie Health, a startup company founded by Marvel and .
Under a license agreement between Corrie Health and The Johns Hopkins University, the university owns equity in Corrie Health, and the university and Marvel, Lee and Martin are entitled to royalty distributions related to technology described in the study. Additionally, Marvel, Martin and Matthias Lee of the Johns Hopkins University Whiting School of Engineering are co-founders of and hold equity in Corrie Health. This arrangement has been reviewed and approved by The Johns Hopkins University in accordance with its conflict of interest policies. The other authors report no conflicts.
