However, the committee did not feel as though the evidence supported a recommendation to offer or not offer structured telephone support and decided not to make a recommendation. Telemonitoring The clinical evidence for TM in people with chronic heart failure suggested that there was a clinically important reduction in mortality and hospitalisations for those who have had a recent hospital admission. Only a single study was included within the community strata for TM. The majority of the evidence that was not from a recently admitted population did not specify the exact nature of the population included within the study. These papers were therefore included within a mixed strata and represented a potential combination of both recently admitted and community dwelling people. This evidence showed a clinically important reduction in mortality. However, TM did not have a clinically important effect on hospitalisation. The committee would have expected either group (e.g. recently admitted or recruited within the community) to have a different baseline risk of mortality or hospitalisations in the usual care arm. Therefore, due to the nature of the evidence included within this mixed strata, the committee found it challenging to accurately interpret the clinical outcomes. The general issues raised by the committee regarding the body of evidence for TM were similar to those discussed for STS. The committee did not feel they could be confident that the evidence reflected a true clinical benefit of TM based on the lack of information regarding the standard of care in the usual care arm and the heterogeneity between the TM interventions included in the review. For example there was a significant degree of variability in the intensity (e.g .monitoring during office hours compared with 24 hours per day/seven days per week), and the nature of the technology (e.g. 