"Life habits management app for patients with heart failure, effective in improving symptoms"
Oct 13, 2024
Professor Choi Dong-ju and Yoon Min-jae of the Department of Circulatory Medicine at Seoul National University Bundang Hospital worked with KT to develop a smartphone application that helps heart failure patients systematically manage their health conditions and proved its effectiveness through domestic multi-center research.
Heart failure is a disease that causes coronary artery disease, valve abnormalities, and excessive drinking, resulting in structural or functional abnormalities of the heart that prevent the heart from supplying blood properly, and about 2.5% of the total population in Korea suffers from this.
This heart failure is a major symptom of shortness of breath even with light movement, and it not only causes difficulty in breathing, but can also lead to death in severe cases, so caution is needed. For treatment, it is necessary to receive drugs, surgery, or procedures, but it is also very important to have a proper lifestyle such as exercise, diet, regular drug use, and blood pressure and pulse measurement.
The ideal way to manage heart failure is to learn accurate information about self-management, practice proper diet and exercise while regularly measuring one's blood pressure, pulse, and weight in daily life, and receive proper medical treatment if necessary according to changes in physical condition.
However, in reality, there are many restrictions on accurately providing and understanding the right education to all patients, and even if education is provided, it is not easy for patients to continue self-management.
In response, the Digital Health Research Association under the Korean Heart Failure Association, led by professors Choi Dong-ju and Yoon Min-jae at Bundang Seoul National University Hospital, and KT collaborated to develop a smartphone application for self-management of heart failure patients.
The smartphone application allows the patient to directly input ▶ blood pressure ▶ pulse ▶ symptoms ▶ diet ▶ drug administration ▶ exercise information, etc., and check the trend of how the information has changed over time.
In addition, blood pressure, pulse, weight, and body moisture are designed to be automatically connected to Bluetooth-based blood pressure meters and body moisture meters to easily check changes in real time. Based on the information collected afterwards, it also sends a warning message when the patient's symptoms or vital signs change to provide feedback so that the patient can cope and self-manage.
The research team collaborated with the teams of Seoul National University Bundang Hospital and ▶ Gyemyeong University Dongsan Hospital ▶ Daeguro Hospital ▶ Seoul St. Mary's Hospital ▶ Samsung Seoul Hospital ▶ Wonju Severance Christian Hospital to check the effectiveness of the application to heart failure patients at seven university hospitals in Korea.
As a result, when heart failure patients use all the functions of a smartphone application for self-management, body water content is significantly improved and the symptoms of fluid retention due to heart failure are improved. In addition, it was confirmed that the respiratory distress index was also significantly improved after 1 month of use compared to the patient group who used only part of the function, and the effectiveness was high in terms of self-management of heart failure patients.
This has proven that it can effectively support self-management, which has been difficult for heart failure patients to practice in their daily lives, through smartphone applications and ultimately help improve heart failure symptoms, suggesting the possibility of being actively introduced and spread in the clinical field in the future.
Professor Dong-ju Choi, who led the study, said "This study confirmed that a simple smartphone application can help a lot in self-management of heart failure patients."We will further advance the application and develop it into a solution that can be introduced in the clinical field."
Meanwhile, this study was published in the 2024 issue of the international journal 『Journal of Medical Internet Research』, and the smartphone application jointly developed with KT aims to be applied in the clinical field through future research and development and advancement processes.
Heart failure is a disease that causes coronary artery disease, valve abnormalities, and excessive drinking, resulting in structural or functional abnormalities of the heart that prevent the heart from supplying blood properly, and about 2.5% of the total population in Korea suffers from this.
This heart failure is a major symptom of shortness of breath even with light movement, and it not only causes difficulty in breathing, but can also lead to death in severe cases, so caution is needed. For treatment, it is necessary to receive drugs, surgery, or procedures, but it is also very important to have a proper lifestyle such as exercise, diet, regular drug use, and blood pressure and pulse measurement.
The ideal way to manage heart failure is to learn accurate information about self-management, practice proper diet and exercise while regularly measuring one's blood pressure, pulse, and weight in daily life, and receive proper medical treatment if necessary according to changes in physical condition.
However, in reality, there are many restrictions on accurately providing and understanding the right education to all patients, and even if education is provided, it is not easy for patients to continue self-management.
In response, the Digital Health Research Association under the Korean Heart Failure Association, led by professors Choi Dong-ju and Yoon Min-jae at Bundang Seoul National University Hospital, and KT collaborated to develop a smartphone application for self-management of heart failure patients.
The smartphone application allows the patient to directly input ▶ blood pressure ▶ pulse ▶ symptoms ▶ diet ▶ drug administration ▶ exercise information, etc., and check the trend of how the information has changed over time.
In addition, blood pressure, pulse, weight, and body moisture are designed to be automatically connected to Bluetooth-based blood pressure meters and body moisture meters to easily check changes in real time. Based on the information collected afterwards, it also sends a warning message when the patient's symptoms or vital signs change to provide feedback so that the patient can cope and self-manage.
The research team collaborated with the teams of Seoul National University Bundang Hospital and ▶ Gyemyeong University Dongsan Hospital ▶ Daeguro Hospital ▶ Seoul St. Mary's Hospital ▶ Samsung Seoul Hospital ▶ Wonju Severance Christian Hospital to check the effectiveness of the application to heart failure patients at seven university hospitals in Korea.
As a result, when heart failure patients use all the functions of a smartphone application for self-management, body water content is significantly improved and the symptoms of fluid retention due to heart failure are improved. In addition, it was confirmed that the respiratory distress index was also significantly improved after 1 month of use compared to the patient group who used only part of the function, and the effectiveness was high in terms of self-management of heart failure patients.
This has proven that it can effectively support self-management, which has been difficult for heart failure patients to practice in their daily lives, through smartphone applications and ultimately help improve heart failure symptoms, suggesting the possibility of being actively introduced and spread in the clinical field in the future.
Professor Dong-ju Choi, who led the study, said "This study confirmed that a simple smartphone application can help a lot in self-management of heart failure patients."We will further advance the application and develop it into a solution that can be introduced in the clinical field."
Meanwhile, this study was published in the 2024 issue of the international journal 『Journal of Medical Internet Research』, and the smartphone application jointly developed with KT aims to be applied in the clinical field through future research and development and advancement processes.
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