"So I'm Nicolas Girerd, I'm a cardiologist in Nancy, France, and I will be discussing the TELESAT results.

Study Rationale

So the reasoning behind the study is to evaluate how remote monitoring can improve patient outcome. This remote monitoring programme, RMPs, have been implemented in France for a few years now and we wanted to evaluate how it was associated with mortality.

Patient Population

So the patient population was actually twofold. On one hand, there are patients hospitalised for heart failure, and on the other hand, patients thought of having high NTproBNP because those are patients that are eligible, according to French law, to remote monitoring.

So this was easy in the remote monitoring programme. Patients, it was a little bit more tricky in the controls to assess.

Key Results

So the key results for this study are that there is an association between remote monitoring programme based uniquely on weight and symptoms evaluation, coupled with tele-education, and it actually was associated with lower rates of all-cause mortality, 35% lower and very significant in this very large study, including almost 20,000 patients.

Implications for Practice

So to impact practice, usually you need randomised evidence. This is not randomised, this is observational, but still interesting real-world data. And this suggests that remote monitoring is associated with lower risk of bad outcomes.

So it may guide the policies of other countries. Currently, in France, it is already reimbursed, but it is actually an exception, I think, in Europe. So it may be helpful to other countries.

Interpretation of Results

The size of the reduction in all-cause mortality is a little bit surprising because it seems very large. It is probably because there is nothing, only remote monitoring. It's actually an interface that helps building follow-up for integrated follow-up for the patient, and this is probably why we have this kind of association.

It's probably not just the monitoring itself, but rather the context of it.”