Patent ID: 7769437

Claim:
A system, comprising: an implantable device having one or more sensing modalities and pacing circuitry for delivering pacing therapy; an external programmer for the implantable device; a telemetry interface enabling communication between the external programmer and the implantable device; wherein the external programmer is programmed to compute a clinical state vector as a combination of a plurality of parameters related to a patient's heart failure status, wherein the plurality of parameters define an n-dimensional vector space with n being the number of parameters and with each parameter mapped to an ordinal scale that represents a coordinate axis in the n-dimensional vector space, and further wherein the n parameters include at least one parameter derived from data transmitted by the implantable device; wherein the external programmer is further programmed to compute a difference vector between the computed clinical state vector and a previously computed state vector, wherein the magnitude of the difference vector indicates the extent of change in the patient's heart failure status and the direction of the difference vector indicates whether the patient's heart failure status is improving or worsening; and, wherein the implantable device is programmed to change a pacing configuration for delivering pacing therapy if the computed difference vector exceeds a specified limit value.