Predicting and preventing hospitalisation in older people with heart disease

Physical activity, frailty and hospitalisation in older people with heart disease: Learning from implanted cardiac device remote monitoring data (Dr Joanne Taylor)

Older people with heart disease are more likely to be admitted to hospital, and they often don’t do as well as younger, less frail people with the disease. In this fellowship, the fellow working with Dr Greenstein will investigate whether monitoring people’s physical activity through their pacemakers can predict those who are most likely to be ill and require a hospital visit. The project takes advantage of existing technology already within pacemakers which can record physical activity and store the data – called embedded accelerometery. Dr Greenstein and his team plan to recruit 150 people over 60 from Manchester Royal Infirmary, to join a clinical study called ‘PATTErn’. They will collect data about people’s daily movement from their pacemaker, as well as collecting additional measurements of their general health and degree of frailty. By analysing this information, they hope to see whether low physical activity in patients happens just before they get ill and need hospitalisation. If this is the case, it might be possible to use the data from people’s pacemakers as an alert, enabling health professionals to contact people before they get really ill and start their life-saving treatment earlier. This could reduce their time in hospital and help them to recover more quickly and completely.