SSOT CardiacCare

Telemonitoring IoT Blockchain

What Is Congestive Heart Failure?

Heart failure affects nearly 6 million Americans. Roughly 670,000 people are diagnosed with heart failure each year. It is the leading cause of hospitalization in people older than age 65.

What Is Congestive Heart Failure?

Heart failure does not mean the heart has stopped working. Rather, it means that the heart's pumping power is weaker than normal. With heart failure, blood moves through the heart and body at a slower rate, and pressure in the heart increases. As a result, the heart cannot pump enough oxygen and nutrients to meet the body's needs. The chambers of the heart may respond by stretching to hold more blood to pump through the body or by becoming stiff and thickened. This helps to keep the blood moving, but the heart muscle walls may eventually weaken and become unable to pump as efficiently. As a result, the kidneys may respond by causing the body to retain fluid (water) and salt. If fluid builds up in the arms, legs, ankles, feet, lungs, or other organs, the body becomes congested, and congestive heart failure is the term used to describe the condition.

What Are the Symptoms of Congestive Heart Failure?


You may not have any symptoms of heart failure, or the symptoms may be mild to severe. Symptoms can be constant or can come and go. The symptoms can include:

  • Congested lungs. Fluid backup in the lungs can cause shortness of breath with exercise or difficulty breathing at rest or when lying flat in bed. Lung congestion can also cause a dry, hacking cough or wheezing.
  • Fluid and water retention. Less blood to your kidneyscauses fluid and water retention, resulting in swollen ankles, legs, abdomen (called edema), and weight gain. Symptoms may cause an increased need to urinate during the night. Bloating in your stomachmay cause a loss of appetite or nausea.
  • Dizziness, fatigue, and weakness. Less blood to your major organs and muscles makes you feel tired and weak. Less blood to the brain can cause dizziness or confusion.
  • Rapid or irregular heartbeats. The heart beats faster to pump enough blood to the body. This can cause a rapid or irregular heartbeat.

SSOT CardiacCare at Home Telemonitoring Program

SSOT CardiacCare telemonitoring can help prevent a symptom from becoming a trip to the hospital. SSOT CardiacCare is a home telemonitoring program for people diagnosed with heart failure. The SSOT CardiacCare at Home Care Telemonitoring Program is a fast, simple way for us to keep an eye on your vital signs and symptoms every day.

That means we can catch an early warning sign, such as a sudden rise in body weight, and treat it before it becomes a bigger problem. It also gives your physician information that is important for your ongoing care. Telemonitoring allows us to check your body weight, blood pressure, heart rate, blood glucose level, oxygen levels and health status.

This telemonitoring program is possible thanks to the SSOT CardiacCare TM system. It lets you take your own vital signs with ease, and sends them to us automatically. This one month program allows you to monitor your health daily and will help you and your physician manage your heart failure from your own home.

Our team brings easy-to-use equipment to your home, installs it for you and shows you how to use it. Heart failure is a chronic, life-changing and difficult disease to manage. At the end of this one month program, you will have the confidence to take charge of your own heart health.

What is included in the SSOT CardiacCare package?

Includes: iPad Mini, Bluetooth Weight Scale, Bluetooth BP Cuff, Access to SSOT CardiacCare Clinician Dashboard

CAPABILITIES:

  • Monitor patients’ daily weight, SpO2, blood pressure, heart rate, etc.
  • Set biometric data thresholds and receive alerts
  • Communicate to patients via HIPAA compliant messaging system
  • Upload data into EMR

How does it work?

1. Patient steps on the weight scale everyday.

2. Readings are uploaded to the cloud via secure blockchain enabled IoT devices.

3. If the patient gains more than 2 lbs/day or 5 lbs/week, a notification is sent to the care team for follow up.

See how blockchain is securing the IoT network of SSOT CardiacCare system?

What is the problem with IoT and how Blockchain can help?

The world is full of connected devices – and more are coming. In 2017, there were an estimated 8.4 billion internet-enabled thermostats, cameras, streetlights and other electronics. By 2020 that number could exceed 20 billion, and by 2030 there could be 500 billion or more. Because they’ll all be online all the time, each of those devices – whether a voice-recognition personal assistant or a pay-by-phone parking meter or a temperature sensor deep in an industrial robot – will be vulnerable to a cyberattack and could even be part of one.

Today, many “smart” internet-connected devices are made by large companies with well-known brand names, like Google, Apple, Microsoft and Samsung, which have both the technological systems and the marketing incentive to fix any security problems quickly. But that’s not the case in the increasingly crowded world of smaller internet-enabled devices, like light bulbs, doorbells and even packages shipped by UPS. Those devices – and their digital “brains” – are typically made by unknown companies, many in developing countries, without the funds or ability – or the brand-recognition need – to incorporate strong security features.

Insecure “internet of things” devices have already contributed to major cyber-disasters, such as the cyberattack on internet routing company Dyn that took down more than 80 popular websites and stalled internet traffic across the U.S. The solution to this problem, in our view as a scholars of “internet of things” technology, blockchain systems and cybersecurity, could be a new way of tracking and distributing security software updates using blockchains.

How is Blockchain securing the IoT network?

Blockchain technology can be used in tracking billions of connected devices, enable the processing of transactions and coordination between devices; allow for significant savings to IoT industry manufacturers. This decentralised approach would eliminate single points of failure, creating a more resilient ecosystem for devices to run on. The cryptographic algorithms used by blockchains, would make consumer data more private.

The ledger is tamper-proof and cannot be manipulated by malicious actors because it doesn’t exist in any single location, and man-in-the-middle attacks cannot be staged because there is no single thread of communication that can be intercepted. Blockchain makes trustless, peer-to-peer messaging possible and has already proven its worth in the world of financial services through cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, providing guaranteed peer-to-peer payment services without the need for third-party brokers.

The decentralized, autonomous, and trustless capabilities of the blockchain make it an ideal component to become a fundamental element of IoT solutions. It is not a surprise that enterprise IoT technologies have quickly become one of the early adopters of blockchain technologies.

In an IoT network, the blockchain can keep an immutable record of the history of smart devices. This feature enables the autonomous functioning of smart devices without the need for centralized authority. As a result, the blockchain opens the door to a series of IoT scenarios that were remarkably difficult, or even impossible to implement without it.

By leveraging the blockchain, IoT solutions can enable secure, trustless messaging between devices in an IoT network. In this model, the blockchain will treat message exchanges between devices similar to financial transactions in a bitcoin network. To enable message exchanges, devices will leverage smart contracts which then model the agreement between the two parties.

One of the most exciting capabilities of the blockchain is the ability to maintain a duly decentralised, trusted ledger of all transactions occurring in a network. This capability is essential to enable the many compliance and regulatory requirements of IoT applications without the need to rely on a centralised model.