A Mobile rehabilitation application for the remote monitoring of cardiac patients after a heart attack or a coronary bypass surgery

This paper describes a personalised rehabilitation application using a smart phone (PDA) and wireless (bio) sensors. It instructs and motivates patients to follow their exercise programme and keeps track of their progress. It also monitors the relevant biosignals and provides immediate feedback to the patient. Sensors transmit data to the mobile phone where it is analysed locally and the data can also be instantaneously transmitted to a healthcare centre for remote monitoring by a health professional. The rehabilitation application is personalised for each cardiac patient and provides tailored advice (e.g. exercise more, slow down). A trial with a rehabilitation centre is in progress in which we investigate whether the personalised rehabilitation application improves the success of the rehabilitation programme in terms of patient compliance with recommended life style changes (such as increase physical activity or lose weight) and whether use of the system brings peace of mind to cardiac patients.