The evidence favors remote monitoring using implantable cardiac devices yet few take advantage of the resource.

BOSTON—Patients who had remote monitoring in their implantable electronic cardiac devices had lower all-cause hospitalization costs and recurrent hospitalizations compared with patients without remote monitoring capabilities, according to a large, retrospective, cohort study.

A comparative effectiveness study of more than 250,000 patients implanted with cardiac devices between 2008 and 2011 found that embedding remote monitoring technology led to improved survival.

Digital health tools may be the ticket for preventing cardiovascular disease or improving outcomes in at-risk patients. A meta-analysis gave digital health interventions an overall thumbs up for primary and secondary prevention.

By performing exome sequencing, researchers have identified two genes and mechanisms (PDE4DIP and ACOT4) associated with an increased risk for ischemic stroke. They also found two other genes (ZFHX3 and ABCA1) had protein-coding variants associated with ischemic stroke.

Despite all their promise, EHRs failed to deliver in a study that compared the quality of care and outcomes for ischemic stroke at hospitals that had and had not adopted the technology. The results were published in the May 12 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

A survey of healthcare professionals found only 10 percent responded that their organizations were using advanced tools for data aggregation with analytics and predictive models.

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