Cost-effectiveness of noninvasive telemedical interventional management in patients with heart failure: health economic analysis of the TIM-HF2 trial.

Background: Noninvasive remote patient management (RPM) in patients with heart failure (HF) has been shown to reduce the days lost due to unplanned cardiovascular hospital admissions and all-cause mortality in the Telemedical Interventional Management in Heart Failure II trial (TIM-HF2). The health economic implications of these findings are the focus of the present analyses from the payer perspective.

Methods And Results: A total of 1538 participants of the TIM-HF2 randomized controlled trial were assigned to the RPM and Usual Care group.

Stratified prevention: opportunities and limitations. Report on the 1st interdisciplinary cardiovascular workshop in Augsburg.

Sufficient exercise and sleep, a balanced diet, moderate alcohol consumption and a good approach to handle stress have been known as lifestyles that protect health and longevity since the Middle Age. This traditional prevention quintet, turned into a sextet by smoking cessation, has been the basis of the "preventive personality" that formed in the twentieth century. Recent analyses of big data sets including genomic and physiological measurements have unleashed novel opportunities to estimate individual health risks with unprecedented accuracy, allowing to target preventive interventions to persons at high risk and at the same time to spare those in whom preventive measures may not be needed or even be harmful.

[Social medicine and healthcare economics. The framework for future forms of healthcare].

In the political debate, even in academia, the concepts of "profitability" or "efficiency" are thrown around very robustly and freely with no regard for the players themselves. Economically speaking there can be no efficiency without a definition of targets in terms of outcomes and their level of quality. If even the government's Council of Economic Experts itself finds in its assessment of hospital funding that the "reform's target parameters - improving the profitability of service provision - have developed positively", but adds that "whether this also applies to the quality of services provided or to the realisation of healthcare outcomes remains to be seen due to the lack of evidence" [21], this indicates a one-sided and problematic curtailment of the concept even by highly competent bodies.