“Health technology is only as good as the system that supports it,” noted PHRI Senior Scientist Jeff Healey at today’s presentation of the REdireCT TAVI study which features remote monitoring of patients’ ECG. The system supporting this study is particularly good – Hamilton Health Science’s academic hospitals and Population Health Research Institute (PHRI)’s team of clinician-researchers.
The Jan. 22, 2019 event, held at PHRI’s offices in the David Braley Cardiac, Vascular and Stroke Research Institute, included representatives of m-Health Solutions, the health technology company supporting REdireCT TAVI, as well as Ontario Centres of Excellence, whose Health Technologies Fund is behind the research study.
Healey is one of the investigators in the ongoing prospective observational cohort study of 240 patients in Canada. The principal investigator is Dr. Madhu Natarajan, who is an interventional cardiologist and scientist on the ACS and Interventional Cardiology program team at PHRI.
During the demonstration event, Dr. Natarajan has a “fireside chat” with former patient, William Hope of the Hamilton area, about his experiences wearing the remote monitoring device. Mr. Hope, who is in his mid-80s, said he had no problems wearing it 24 hours a day, and only got called about it once “when I was in the shower!”
William Hope successfully underwent the procedure known as TAVI (Transcatheter Aortic Valve Implantations), which an increasing number of older adults in Canada are having these days. “I went from feeling 80 to 40,” Mr. Hope enthused about the TAVI procedure at HHS.