Medtronic, Inc. (NYSE: MDT) introduced the CareLink® Network for Heart Failure, an extension of the world's largest remote implantable cardiac device monitoring system, that will be available this fall for heart failure clinicians.

The patient management solution provides heart failure physicians and nurses with important device data, which can help them better manage their patients. With CareLink for Heart Failure, clinicians remotely monitor heart failure device patients and their implantable cardiac device diagnostics, such as the Medtronic-exclusive OptiVol® Fluid Status Monitoring and Cardiac Compass® Reports, which together may help identify patients at risk of worsening heart failure. Heart failure is the most expensive cardiovascular disease in the United States, costing an estimated $40 billion per year and accounts for more than one million hospitalizations annually.¹

"Leveraging the cardiac device information and the new patient management program, I'm able to better manage my growing number of heart failure patients with timely data about their heart condition and changes," said J. Thomas Heywood, M.D., director of heart failure program at Scripps Clinic in La Jolla, Calif. "This allows me to provide proactive patient management with a goal of reducing hospitalizations of my high-risk heart failure patients."

The new CareLink for Heart Failure program makes it easier for clinicians to monitor heart failure patients with implantable cardiac devices, including cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) devices, which improve the heart's pumping efficiency or blood flow, and implantable cardioverter-defibrillators (ICDs) for patients at risk of sudden cardiac death or deadly arrhythmias. Remote monitoring has been shown to safely reduce the number of clinic visits and save patients and physicians time on follow up visits.²

The CareLink Network for Heart Failure provides customizable CareAlert® Notifications to help clinicians identify cardiac device patients at risk for worsening symptoms. Timely access to clinically-proven and relevant diagnostic information from cardiac devices, such as OptiVol Fluid Status Monitoring, which measures changes in fluid status, and Cardiac Compass Reports with objective, trended heart condition data can help identify the signs of worsening heart failure.

"The Medtronic CareLink Network for Heart Failure is a new patient management solution to help clinicians risk stratify and manage their growing heart failure patient caseload," said Pat Mackin, president of the Cardiac Rhythm Disease Management business and senior vice president at Medtronic. "Using timely device data can provide clinicians the information they need to identify at-risk patients and intervene before the onset of symptoms."

About the Medtronic CareLink Network

More than 500,000 patients and 4,000 clinics in 30 countries are on the Medtronic CareLink Network making it the world's largest and most widely used remote monitoring system for implantable cardiac device patients. The CareLink Network has registered more than 2 million patient data transmissions since the service's inception in 2002.

The CareLink Network provides the most flexible alert system in the industry offering customizable alert notifications for devices with Conexus® Wireless Telemetry. Through this network, patient data are transmitted from their implanted device using a portable monitor through cellular signals or a standard telephone line. Within minutes, the patient's physician and nurses can view the data on a secure Internet website. Available information includes, but is not limited to, arrhythmia episode reports and stored electrograms along with device integrity information.

¹. American Heart Association / American Stroke Association, Heart Disease and Stroke Statistics, 2010 Update.

². Varma, Niraj et al., Efficacy and Safety of Automatic Remote Monitoring for Implantable Cardioverter-Defibrillator Follow-Up. TRUST Trial. Circ. July 12, 2010.

Source:
Medtronic