Cardiac Pacemaker Offers Wireless Remote Monitoring

An innovative cardiac pacemaker intended for people with bradycardia, an abnormally slow heart rate, uses wireless technology to communicate with clinicians.

The Accent RF cardiac pacemaker is equipped with daily remote monitoring capabilities that provide timely notification of actionable events and flexible, remote, follow-up scheduling. Automatic test results and complete diagnostics are available via wireless communication, and can be accessed from the physician's office or the patient's home, promoting a more effective association between the patient and the physician. During regular follow-up appointments, data from the wireless pacemaker are automatically forwarded to the physician with no manipulation or patient interaction required; the physician can then review all of the data by consulting the Merlin net Patient Care Network (PCN).


Among the features of the Accent RF are flexible programmability, which delivers optimal therapy based on patient needs; proprietary SenseAbility technology that provides programming flexibility for accurate sensing over a wide range of atrial and ventricular signals, by adjusting during every beat; a ventricular intrinsic preference (VIP) pacing feature that reduces the risk of heart failure, while supporting the ventricle for every nonconducted beat, promoting atrioventricular (AV) synchrony. Changing thresholds are automatically used monitored to control pacing amplitude and atrial fibrillation (AF) suppression technology inhibits episodes of paroxysmal and persistent AF.

The Merlin.net patient care network allows physicians to compile more complete patient records by transferring the data collected via the pacemaker into electronic health records (EHRs). Physicians can thus consult information on patients at any time from an easy-to-access site. In addition to follow-up data transmitted at regular scheduled intervals, wireless communication also makes it possible to alert the physician to important changes with the device or the patient's heart rate. The Accent RF cardiac pacemaker was developed by St-Jude Medical (St. Paul, MN, USA).

"This new device offers a viable alternative in terms of diagnosis, monitoring and therapy by ensuring more effective and documented communication between patients and physicians," said cardiologist Bernard Thibault, M.D., one of the team at Montreal Heart Institute (MHI; QC, Canada) who implanted the first Accent RF pacemaker in Canada. "Being able to monitor patients remotely lets us achieve important gains in effectiveness without compromising the quality of care to patients, who no longer have to travel just for routine examinations. The automatic alerts give patients greater peace of mind, since they can be assured that we will be advised if there are any changes with the device or their condition.”

Related Links:
St-Jude Medical
Merlin.net Patient Care Network
Montreal Heart Institute