Brazilian Heart Insufficiency With Telemedicine

A collaboration gap across sectors is a common problem in Denmark and Brazil. Brazilian Heart Insufficiency with Telemedicine (BRAHIT) will run in parallel with the ongoing Danish Reaching the Frail Elderly project (REAFEL - NCT04162548), supported by the Ministry of Higher Education and Health (Innovationsfonden - Grand Solutions), until 2021. REAFEL seeks a stronger collaboration between primary care and hospital cardiologists to manage frail elderly patients, using teleconsultation and data from mobile devices in Denmark.

Health resources are scarce in Brazil and a pressing need for the Municipal Secretary of Health of Rio de Janeiro is to reduce wait times to access some areas, as cardiology. When patients are stable after undergoing highly complex procedures in a tertiary hospital, are discharged to outpatient treatment at primary care but, a heterogenous expansion of the primary care system in the Rio de Janeiro municipality has created a great resistance from the population, and among cardiologists, to accept continuing cardiology treatment at the primary care system. Enhancing a collaboration between primary care and cardiologists, that is tangible for the patients, can relieve this pressure. The cross-sectorial collaboration in BRAHIT is based on the involvement of Instituto Nacional de Cardiologia (INC), a tertiary cardiology hospital, with primary investigator Aurora Issa (INC) and primary-and homecare in Rio de Janeiro, with primary investigator Leonardo Graever, Primary Care Special Advisor in the Municipality of Rio de Janeiro. The project proposal originates from Denmark and sponsors the project through a Danida grant (Window 2 from the Danish Foreign Ministry - Danida Fellowship Center 18-M03-KU) to the cardiologist Helena Domínguez, as associate professor in the Dept. of Biomedicine, UCPH, and consultant in Bispebjerg-Frederiksberg Hospital.

Being complex public health intervention studies, mixed methods are necessary to evaluate the value gained in the project and to provide research-based policy briefs. The methods include qualitative analyses and a cluster-randomization trial, the latter used for power calculation. Such calculation is based on adequate heart failure medications aggregated in a score constructed for this purpose. Secondary end-point is rate of number of readmissions for any cause, after discharge with heart failure diagnosis.