This paper addresses patient-reported outcomes (PROs) and telemonitoring in congestive heart failure (CHF), both increasingly important topics. The interest in CHF trials is shifting from hard end-points such as hospitalization and mortality, to softer end-points such health-related quality of life. However, the relation of these softer end-points to objective parameters is not well studied. Telemonitoring is suitable for collecting both patient-reported outcomes and objective parameters. Most telemonitoring studies, however, do not take full advantage of the available sensor technology and intelligent data analysis. The Chiron clinical observational study was performed among 24 CHF patients (17 men and 7 women, age 62.9 ± 9.4 years, 15 NYHA class II and 9 class III, 10 of ishaemic, aetiology, 6 dilated, 2 valvular, and 6 of multiple aetiologies or cardiomyopathy) in Italy and UK. A large number of physiological and ambient parameters were collected by wearable and other devices, together with PROs describing how well the patients felt, over 1,086 days of observation. The resulting data were mined for relations between the objective parameters and the PROs. The objective parameters (humidity, ambient temperature, blood pressure, SpO2, and sweeting intensity) could predict the PROs with accuracies up to 86% and AUC up to 0.83, making this the first report providing evidence for ambient and physiological parameters to be objectively related to PROs in CHF patients. We also analyzed the relations in the predictive models, gaining some insights into what affects the feeling of health, which was also generally not attempted in previous investigations. The paper strongly points to the possibility of using PROs as primary end-points in future trials.

The Chiron project carried out an observational study in which congestive-heart-failure patients were telemonitored in two countries. Data from 1,068 recording days of 25 patients were gathered, consisting of 15 dynamic parameters (measured daily or continuously) and 49 static parameters (measured once or a few times during the study). The features derived from these parameters were mined for their association with the feeling of good/bad health. The findings mostly correspond to the current medical knowledge, although some may represent new insights.

The Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE competition began in January 2012, with the goal of developing a mobile device to monitor health parameters and quickly diagnose several common medical conditions. In August 2014, a list of ten finalists was announced, including a Slovenian team MESI Simplifying diagnostics that brings together companies MESI,