NEW ORLEANS – The sponsors of the Cardiomems heart failure monitoring system have struggled to gain acceptance from public payers, but data from a U.S. FDA-mandated post-approval study show that the device reduced hospital readmissions by 58 percent, a set of data that could finally tilt the field for coverage decisively in the device's direction.

NEW ORLEANS – The Apple Heart study has accumulated data from more than 400,000 participants in its evaluation of the ability of an algorithm to detect abnormalities that may be indicative of atrial fibrillation (AF), although the enrollment came up short of the target of half a million users. Nonetheless, Mintu Turakhia, a cardiologist at Stanford, Calif.-based Stanford University, said that while the study has some significant limitations, "we now have a footprint for evaluating technology such as this, and how to do this in an appropriate and scalable way."