Home Monitoring

Leading the Way for High-Risk Babies With Congenital Heart Disease

In 2008, the Heart Center at Nationwide Children's launched a home monitoring program for newborn infants with congenital heart disease identified as needing close monitoring until their next surgery. The home monitoring program was one of the first developed in the state of Ohio. Home monitoring provides parents the ability to monitor weight, heart rate and oxygen levels at home to provide early detection of changing cardiac status. Hundreds of patients from Ohio and around the nation have been monitored since the program’s inception.

In 2018 Nationwide Children's partnered with Children’s Mercy Hospital from Kansas City to utilize their CHAMP® (Cardiac High Acuity Monitoring Program) app and technology for the interstage single ventricle patients. From their home, parents perform the routine weight, heart rate and oxygen saturation checks and then input the data into the CHAMP app. Additionally parents take a 15-second video of their child each day. The data and videos are electronically transmitted in real-time to a secure website. Each workday the Single Ventricle nurse clinicians and nurse practitioner review the data and videos looking for concerning trends or changes in the child’s vital signs, breathing patterns, skin color or general appearance.

The Heart Center team is also involved with the National Pediatric Cardiology Quality Improvement Collaborative (NPC-QIC). This multi-center collaborative works together studying and monitoring interstage variables and outpatient monitoring points to ultimately improve care, outcomes and mortality in newborn patients with complex congenital heart disease. 

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