The Importance of Prognostic Variables to Monitoring Heart Failure Using Health Management Systems

Heart Failure is a syndromal disease affecting about 2% of the world’s adult population and about 10% of adults over 70 years of age. Because of the progressive nature of this disease, continuous and close monitoring of disease progression is an important approach to managing patient quality of life once data suggest that patients who develop Heart Failure have difficulty maintaining self-care routines. The use of technology to assist physicians and patients in managing Heart Failure offers great opportunities related to the challenges of managing the disease. Several papers have shown that the use of follow-up protocols by patients from Heart Failure reduces hospital readmissions by approximately 26%. Therefore, regular follow-up of patients is crucial to keep the disease stable and maintain the quality of life of these people. However, through the use of technologies like electronic follow-up protocols and Decision Support Technologies, disease management could be more assertive and precise. For this reason, in this paper we present an overview of how prognostic variables can be important for system development and patient monitoring.