Home Monitoring of Adults with Cystic Fibrosis (HOME-CF)

A Prospective Pilot Study of Home Monitoring in Adults with Cystic Fibrosis (HOME-CF)

Cystic fibrosis (CF) is the most common fatal inherited condition in Caucasians, causing recurrent chest infections and premature death due to lung failure. When patients develop chest infections their symptoms usually slowly worsen over the course of several days to weeks. Due to this gradual onset, patients often seek medical attention several days or weeks after symptoms start to worsen. We believe that if we were able to monitor patients more closely we could diagnose and treat chest infections earlier and consequently improve health outcomes.



The HOME-CF study aims to investigate whether home monitoring is beneficial for adults with CF. 100 subjects will be randomly allocated, 50 to receive home monitoring and 50 to receive routine clinical care for 12 months. Subjects receiving home monitoring will measure their lung function and symptoms twice weekly and this data will be transmitted to the medical team by means of a modified mobile phone.



We hypothesize that home monitoring will allow us to diagnosing chest infections at an earlier stage and reduce hospital inpatient days. We will also assess the subjects' experience of receiving home monitoring, the impact on body weight and lung function and conduct a full health economic analysis to assess value for money. We will also ask subjects to collect a urine sample once weekly to allow us to measure urinary levels of inflammatory markers.



Subjects will be recruited at the West Midlands Adult CF Centre in Birmingham. The research team are well placed to carry out the study because we are a large regional adult CF centre with an excellent record of conducting clinical research.