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University of Florida (UF) Precision Health Research Center in The Villages and Casana Announce Study Comparing In-home Heart Health Monitoring Device to Traditional Telemonitoring

Author: Casana Press Release

Published: September 7, 2021

Measuring Adherence of an IoT Home Health Device vs. Traditional Telemonitoring for Chronic Condition Management

ROCHESTER, N.Y., September 7, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Casana, a healthcare technology firm that is re-inventing in-home health monitoring, announced today that they are partnering with University of Florida (UF) Precision Health Research Center in The Villages to conduct a Heart Seat Adherence study. The purpose of the study is to establish a baseline for adherence of traditional telemonitoring devices in the home compared to the adherence rates of The Heart Seat™.

In-home health monitoring, also known as Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM), is the utilization of technology to enable the monitoring of patients outside of the conventional clinical settings. Capturing data points consistently over time and performing trend analysis has the potential to significantly improve health outcomes. The American Heart Association (AHA) believes that, “RPM can provide a more holistic view of a patient’s health over time, increase visibility into a patient’s adherence to a treatment, and enable timely intervention before a costly care episode.” (AHA, Using Remote Patient Monitoring…). As a result of the Covid pandemic, integration and demand for telehealth and remote monitoring has accelerated within the healthcare system.

This study is of a new non-invasive home health monitoring device built into a toilet seat called The Heart Seat. The Heart Seat has been designed with the goal of providing reliable monitoring of health parameters for patients in their home, to help patients and their care teams manage chronic conditions. The Heart Seat has not yet been cleared by the FDA for clinical use.

The goal of this study is to collect data on the endpoint of adherence for in-home health monitoring devices to fill the gap in research data available on this topic. Casana and UF PHRC are collaborating on this study with the shared belief that reliable data from the home, collected between doctor visits, could provide clinical teams with data to help manage patients’ conditions.

According to Carla VandeWeerd, PhD, Director of UF Clinical and Translational Science Institute at UF PHRC, “remote patient monitoring (RPM) has the potential to significantly impact the healthcare system, and in particular, for communities like our partners at The Villages, by facilitating the transition from reactive care to proactive and preventive care, from the comfort of one’s home. The use of RPM is still quite low. We are using this study to understand a baseline of RPM adherence rates and evaluate The Heart Seat adherence rates.”

For example, in the BEAT-HF trial, when secondary analysis looked into only adherent subpopulations, hospitalization endpoints were achieved, but not met across the entire study population. Low adherence rates seem to be a contributor to the low outcome measurements.

“We believe improving adherence with in-home heart health monitoring devices will help promote the accelerated adoption of at-home health,” said Austin McChord, CEO of Casana. “Many devices require patient and/or caregiver intervention and are frequently plagued by user error.” These factors are particularly challenging for elderly patients, who we believe will greatly benefit from enabling health in the home, if done without adding burden.”

With The Heart Seat, Casana is launching a new category of home health monitoring devices aiming to provide an effortless and easy-to-use collection of vitals and data to keep people healthy at home. Through The Heart Seat adherence study, Casana hopes to demonstrate that The Heart Seat enhances adherence rates above traditional approaches.

For UF PHRC, this study is a continuation of their research portfolio on innovative solutions to enable healthcare in the home for the aging population.

For more information about this study or interest in participating, please visit https://casanacare.com/research/villages/ or contact 352-247-2493 or email: Villages-Research@ufl.edu.

About The UF Health: Precision Health Research Center (PHRC)

The Villages is home to The UF Health: Precision Health Research Center (PHRC). In collaboration with UF Health, The Villages Health, and The Villages community, the PHRC focuses on advancing science that facilitates our ability to predict, prevent, and cure health problems that impact health and wellness in late-life in a customized and personal way – at the individual and community levels. The PHRC provides an opportunity for conducting translational research with a multidisciplinary team and welcomes innovative and collaborative partners with a shared vision of improving the quality of life for Villagers and older adults across the U.S.

About The Villages

In only 30 years, The Villages has become the largest planned older-adult community in the U.S, and is home to more than 140,000 residents over the age of 55. While spanning more than 50 square miles, The Villages creates a ‘small town’ culture by building homes across a collection of neighborhoods, organized around neighborhood recreation centers and 3 large town squares. The Villages encourages an active lifestyle by providing over 800 daily recreational activities, over 4,000 resident-led clubs, and 500 adult learning courses within the community. Villagers comprise a well-defined and socially cohesive population, representing older-adults from all 50 states and 14 different countries.
www.thevillages.com

About Casana

Casana’s vision is to create an effortless, home monitoring device available to consumers in order to support proactive health. The Heart Seat™ is our first solution. By capturing long-term vital trends from sensors such as ECG, BCG, and PPG through daily monitoring, care providers can receive a holistic picture of their patients or loved ones’ health without worrying what might be missing due to compliance barriers. In volunteering to participate in this study you are supporting our vision to help those who are currently struggling with day-to-day medical monitoring.
Casana