e-Health: A promising solution for optimizing management of chronic diseases. Example of the national e-Health project E-care based on an e-platform in the context of chronic heart failure

Background Monitoring patients with heart failure by using telemedicine systems is a potential means for optimizing the management of these patients and to facilitate the job of health care professionals. We report the experience of the deployment of such a monitoring platform, through the E-care project. Methods The national e-heath project E-care has developed an “intelligent” communicative platform enabling the monitoring of patients with NYHA stages III and IV heart failure using non-invasive sensors. This project has been deployed since October 2013 in the Strasbourg University Hospital (in Strasbourg, France). Results To date, more than 180 patients have been included. The patient profile included was: elderly patient, with several chronic diseases (>90%), chronic heart failure in more than 60% of cases, total loss of autonomy in 25%. The E-care system operated perfectly and the experimental phase enabled us to validate the technological choices. A qualitative survey helped to positively assess the system's ergonomics. A preliminary analysis of the relevance of alerts with our inference engine design resulted in no malfunction. Conclusion Preliminary results following the deployment of E-care system in hospitals appear to show that this platform will assist health care professionals, especially patient nurse or doctor, by providing an automated processing of these sensors’ transmitted data in order to early detect and report signs of cardiac impairment