Fundament: Telemedicine for follow-up in heart failure (HF) patients is effective in reducing hospitalizations, total and cardiovascular mortality. However, few studies were conducted in low and middle income, where lower access to technology and illiteracy could impact the results.Objective: To assess the effectiveness of associating telemedicine strategies, when compared to usual care, in reducing hospitalizations related to HF in patients discharged from the hospital due to HF.Methods: Controlled, randomized, multicenter, parallel-arm clinical trial, with an allocation ratio of 1:1, blinded to outcome evaluation, in which 340 patients who were discharged from public hospitals in Belo Horizonte due to HF will be randomized. Patients will be followed for 6 months and the intervention group will receive, in addition to the usual care, Structured Telephone Support (STS) from a nurse, a doctor, and an educational program. Counseling will be according to a clinical decision tree. The level of significance in the statistical analysis will be 5%.Expected results: Reduction in the number of hospital readmissions and/or in hospitalization time, in addition to developing a software with a clinical decision tree for remote follow-up and patient education about HF adapted to local culture. Conclusions:The intention of this study is to develop a telemedicine strategy and assess whether or not, in addition to the usual care, it is effective in reducing hospitalizations and mortality from HF. If effective, the aforementioned strategy could reduce costs and hospital needs in the Unified Health System (SUS, in Portuguese) for patients with HF. These results will be even more relevant considering the pandemic of COVID-19.

Objective: A substantial number of people with COPD suffer from exacerbations, which are defined as an acute worsening of respiratory symptoms. To minimize exacerbations, telehealth has emerged as an alternative to improve clinical management, access to health care, and support for self-management. Our objective was to map the evidence of telehealth/telemedicine for the monitoring of adult COPD patients after hospitalization due to an exacerbation. Methods: Bibliographic search was carried in PubMed, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), Web of Science, Scopus, Biblioteca Virtual de Saúde/LILACS and Cochrane Library databases to identify articles describing telehealth and telemonitoring strategies in Portuguese, English, or Spanish published by December of 2021. Results: Thirty-nine articles, using the following concepts (number of articles), were included in this review: telehealth (21); telemonitoring (20); telemedicine (17); teleconsultation (5); teleassistance (4); telehomecare and telerehabilitation (3 each); telecommunication and mobile health (2 each); and e-health management, e-coach, telehome, telehealth care and televideo consultation (1 each). All these concepts describe strategies which use telephone and/or video calls for coaching, data monitoring, and health education leading to self-management or self-care, focusing on providing remote integrated home care with or without telemetry devices. Conclusions: This review demonstrated that telehealth/telemedicine in combination with telemonitoring can be an interesting strategy to benefit COPD patients after discharge from hospitalization for an exacerbation, by improving their quality of life and reducing re-hospitalizations, admissions to emergency services, hospital length of stay, and health care costs.