Technology Teams Up With Patient Care

In October 2010, a UCLA-led consortium of five UC schools (Los Angeles, Davis, Irvine, San Diego, San Francisco) and the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center received a three-year $9.9M grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. The effort, Variations in Care: Comparing Heart Failure Case Transition Intervention Effects, will research the use of wireless and telephone care management to reduce hospital readmissions for heart failure patients.

The UC consortium includes Los Angeles, Davis, Irvine, San Diego, and San Francisco. Given that this research involves not just healthcare but technology, the project will take a “team science” approach among the six institutions and within UCLA. The UCLA team includes the Geffen School of Medicine (Dr. M. Ong, Dr. C. Mangione, Dr. J. Escarce, Dr. G. Fonarow); the School of Nursing (Prof. L. Evangelista); the School of Dentistry (Prof. H. Liu); and the Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science (Prof. Majid Sarrafzadeh, co-director of the Computer Science Department’s Wireless Health Institute).

The project will examine the effect of two interventions: managing the transition from inpatient to outpatient care via telephone, and managing the transition from inpatient to outpatient care via wireless remote monitors and telephone. These two interventions will be compared to the standard care for heart failure patients.  The goal is to improve quality and reduce cost of care and, most importantly, to identify approaches that are applicable in every community, not just in large academic centers.