An m-Health system for education and motivation in cardiac rehabilitation: the experience of HeartCycle guided exercise:

IntroductionHome-based programmes for cardiac rehabilitation play a key role in the recovery of patients with coronary artery disease. However, their necessary educational and motivational components have been rarely implemented with the help of modern mobile technologies. We developed a mobile health system designed for motivating patients to adhere to their rehabilitation programme by providing exercise monitoring, guidance, motivational feedback, and educational content.MethodsOur multi-disciplinary approach is based on mapping “desired behaviours” into specific system’s specifications, borrowing concepts from Fogg’s Persuasive Systems Design principles. A randomised controlled trial was conducted to compare mobile-based rehabilitation (55 patients) versus standard care (63 patients).ResultsSome technical issues related to connectivity, usability and exercise sessions interrupted by safety algorithms affected the trial. For those who completed the rehabilitation (19 of 55), results show high levels of ...