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Comment & Response
July 2016

Telemedicine in Heart Failure—Ineffective or Just Ill Used?

Author Affiliations
  • 1Healthcare Transformation Lab, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston
  • 2Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts
  • 3Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences University, Worcester
JAMA Intern Med. 2016;176(7):1035. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2016.2857

To the Editor The promise of digital technology as a disruptive force in health care has led to companies flooding the marketplace with mobile applications and “smart” connected devices as adjuncts to traditional care modalities. While the hype behind such innovative technologies is genuine, their effect on health care costs, quality, and patient outcomes are yet to be proven. Many digital health experts have championed targeting high-cost chronic diseases like heart failure (HF) as a way to leverage digital health solutions to improve health care value. However, the article by Ong and colleagues1 published in a recent issue of JAMA Internal Medicine demonstrated that the use of remote patient monitoring interventions may not be sufficient to decrease readmissions rates in the HF population.1 However, as indicated by the authors, a major limitation may be the technology and integration itself.

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