Increasing adherence and collecting symptom-specific biometric signals in remote monitoring of heart failure patients: a randomized controlled trial.

Objectives: Mobile health (mHealth) regimens can improve health through the continuous monitoring of biometric parameters paired with appropriate interventions. However, adherence to monitoring tends to decay over time. Our randomized controlled trial sought to determine: (1) if a mobile app with gamification and financial incentives significantly increases adherence to mHealth monitoring in a population of heart failure patients; and (2) if activity data correlate with disease-specific symptoms.

Materials and methods: We recruited individuals with heart failure into a prospective 180-day monitoring study with 3 arms. All 3 arms included monitoring with a connected weight scale and an activity tracker. The second arm included an additional mobile app with gamification, and the third arm included the mobile app and a financial incentive awarded based on adherence to mobile monitoring.

Results: We recruited 111 heart failure patients into the study. We found that the arm including the financial incentive led to significantly higher adherence to activity tracker (95% vs 72.2%, P = .01) and weight (87.5% vs 69.4%, P = .002) monitoring compared to the arm that included the monitoring devices alone. Furthermore, we found a significant correlation between daily steps and daily symptom severity.

Discussion and conclusion: Our findings indicate that mobile apps with added engagement features can be useful tools for improving adherence over time and may thus increase the impact of mHealth-driven interventions. Additionally, activity tracker data can provide passive monitoring of disease burden that may be used to predict future events.