Technology enabled behavioural change as a pathway towards better self-management of CVD

PATHway proposes a radically novel approach to Cardiac Rehabilitation (CR) that will ensure a paradigm shift towards empowering patients to more effectively self-manage their Cardiovascular disease (CVD). It has the potential to deliver significant cost savings to the healthcare system. PATHway will provide individualized rehabilitation programs that use socially inclusive exercise sessions as the basis upon which to provide a personalized comprehensive lifestyle intervention program (exercise/physical activity (PA), smoking, diet, stress management, alcohol use, medication compliance) to enable patients to both better understand and deal with their own condition and to lead a healthier lifestyle in general.

This will be made possible by the provision of an internet enabled sensor-based home exercise platform that allows remote participation in CR exercise programs at any time, by a small number of patients from the comfort of their own living room. The proposed platform will contain an autonomous avatar as a virtual coach, supporting an exercise class (‘Exerclass’) and exercise-based game (‘Exergame’), to be completed individually or by a small number of remote participants, who are at a similar stage of CR. The system will include peer mentoring, stimulating social support and interaction by allowing individuals to engage more.

In addition, the platform will support real-time analysis and positive feedback on exercise technique. The platform will also support day-long monitoring of participants’ physiological responses. Sensed data will be combined with patient supplied information on other lifestyle factors. Both the sensed and user provided data will be continuously aggregated and used as the basis for analysis to adapt and personalize the patient’s rehabilitation program over time, with abstracted summaries provided as feedback to both the patient and his/her clinician. This will serve to motivate the patient and help the clinician make more informed decisions.