Is Home Telemonitoring Feasible in the Care of Chronic Diseases - Insights into Adherence to a Self-management Intervention in Renewing Health Finland Trial

eHealth studies typically suffer from high attrition rates. Objective To investigate type 2 diabetes and heart disease patients’ adherence to a self-management intervention that combined health coaching and telemonitoring. Methods Renewing Health Finland was a 12-month randomized controlled trial to improve quality of life (QoL) and/or HbA1c of 595 patients with chronic conditions. The intervention consisted of (1) weekly measurement of health parameters (2) health coaching every 4–6 weeks. Adherence to telemonitoring was defined as the percentage of weeks with at least one reported health measurement. Adherence to coaching was defined as the number of received calls. Results The median percentage of monitored weeks was 65 % without time-dependent attrition. 66 % of participants received 7–11 calls that corresponds to the predefined coaching schedule. Adherence did not correlate with QoL or HbA1c. Discussion Our results indicate that the intervention in the Renewing Health Finland trial was delivered almost with planned intensity.