Researchers have developed a clinical decision support application that monitors heart failure patients' medical tests, health status and promptly notifies clinicians when their conditions have changed or when they require advanced disease therapies. The researchers found that the app led to significantly improved detection of disease advancements such as an increase in patients' survival rates as well as improve quality of life.

"We found that clinical decision support can facilitate the early identification of patients needing advanced heart failure therapy and that its use was associated with significantly more patients visiting specialised heart facilities and longer survival," revealed the team led by R. Scott Evans, Medical Informatics director at Intermountain Healthcare -- a not-for-profit firm in Utah, the US.