A home-based care model for outpatient cardiac rehabilitation based on mobile technologies

Cardiac rehabilitation programs offer effective means to prevent recurrence of a cardiac event. However, poor uptake of current programs have been reported globally. Home based model is considered as an alternative to avoid barriers related to hospital based programs. The challenge in a home based program is to re-establish the link between the patient and clinician regardless of their location. Mobile phones and internet technologies can potentially be used to enable a comprehensive home based care model. We developed tools and integrated model for home based cardiac rehabilitation based on a mobile phone with integrated accelerometer to measure physical exercise and diary to collect information on physiological risk factors and other health information. Video and teleconferencing are used for mentoring sessions and educational multimedia content is transferred via messaging systems to the patients phone to be viewed on demand. The model can be extended to management of other chronic conditions.