Background: Social isolation and loneliness are significantly associated with adverse health outcomes, including a 30% increase of cardiovascular events. Social isolation and loneliness in patients experiencing comorbid depression and anxiety are not accounted for in most in-patient risk prediction models and primary care decision support tools. Clinicians are unable to evaluate in real-time how psychosocial risk may impact heart failure (HF) care, decompensation, or subsequent outcomes. Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) has proven valuable to collect real-time patient data, but little is known about the added value of EMA in HF care when combined with other self-reported data.

Methods: This scoping review summarized studies that used EMA among persons with HF. Only English language studies and full-text studies were eligible for review. Key search terms were ecological momentary assessments (EMA), ecological momentary interventions (EMI), heart failure, social isolation, and loneliness. The primary goal is to create a conceptual map of EMA in HF research, and to use these findings to inform the dissemination of EMA in HF care settings.

Results: We reviewed 22 peer-reviewed studies examining EMA in HF. We found EMA to be feasible for managing real-time data from persons HF. EMA was shown to be effective in optimizing clinician time, reducing disease management costs, and reaching large numbers of patients quickly. Our future research will compare EMA to traditional clinic-based data collection to determine effective dissemination in practice.

Conclusions: EMA is a viable methodology for assessing and mitigating social isolation and loneliness among persons with HF.