[Pacemakers and defibrillators: what should we know about home monitoring?]

Ethical and legal challenges for health telematics in a global world: telehealth and the technological imperative

Telehealth is one of the more recent applications of ICT to health care. It promises to be both cost-effective and efficient. However, there lies a danger that focusing mainly on pragmatic considerations will ignore fundamental ethical issues with legal implications that could undermine its success. Implicated here are, among others, changes in the nature of the health care professional patient relationship and informed consent, etc. The position of health informatics professionals as well as hard- and software providers is also affected. A further complicating factor is outsourcing. This paper identifies relevant issues and outlines some of their implications.

[Management of atrial fibrillation in patients with cardiac stimulators or defibrillators: the possibilities of telemonitoring]

Some cardiac stimulators and defibrillators can be followed by telemonitoring. Telemonitoring permits diagnosis of atrial fibrillation episodes, which are frequently asymptomatic. Combination of holter memories with telemonitoring gives numerous informations about arrhythmias occurring. This can help to optimize rhythm control, rate control or anticoagulation. Examples issued from practice are presented in this article.