To improve supervision of patients with chronic heart failure, Hareld Kemps, a cardiologist specializing in sports, took inspiration from the professional soccer players and cyclists that come see him. He worked on the implementation of a special heart watch, allowing him to home-monitor his patients. This doesn't only create a wealth of medical data, but also better insight into personal lifestyle. On Thursday, February 8, the development of this new care pathway will be the focus of the TU/e symposium Healthy Heart @ Home, which will be followed by the inauguration of the new Professor of Remote Patient Management in Chronic Cardiac Care at the Department of Industrial Design.
A person over eighty with chronic heart failure and a young soccer player. At first sight, these two people couldn't be more different. But, says cardiologist Hareld Kemps, they actually have a lot in common.
"The eighty-something-year-old is also doing top-level sports. With a badly functioning heart, getting dressed in the morning takes the same amount of energy as an endurance training session for a professional athlete. And after this effort, the day's just getting started."
By looking at heart patients from another perspective and combining his knowledge of both groups, cardiologist and newly appointed Industrial Design Professor Hareld Kemps is working on the development of a new care pathway. "We pay more attention to the person as a whole now, rather than focusing exclusively on the clinical picture."
Optimizing everything
Due to their limited exercise capacity, older patients with chronic heart failure are often confined to their homes and have minimum exercise. Which is detrimental to their everyday functioning, which gets progressively worse. To break this pattern, Kemps calls for detailed custom supervision, similar to what top athletes get.
"For a professional soccer player or cyclist, you need to optimize everything. Sleep, nutrition, relaxation… you try to find the right balance both in physical and psychological terms. But an eighty-something-year-old with chronic heart failure also benefits from such a multidisciplinary approach."
This is why Kemps and his colleagues looked for options for monitoring patients in their daily lives. The COVID pandemic actually worked to their advantage in this respect, Kemps tells us.
"When the hospitals 'closed', this had a huge impact on regular healthcare. Suddenly, all we had to supervise our patients were video communication and chat. And we saw it worked great. A semi-annual consultation is only a snapshot; by seeing the patient in their home we found out so much more."
Quality of life main focus at symposium Healthy Heart @ Home
Thursday, February 8, Máxima MC, TU/e Industrial Design, and Eindhoven MedTech Innovation Center (e/MTIC) will organize the symposium Healthy Heart @ Home from 9:30 AM onwards. Directly afterward, Professor Hareld Kemps will deliver his inaugural lecture entitled Hartfalen is Topsport.
