Development and Usability Evaluation of Web-Based Telerehabilitation Platform for Patients After Myocardial Infarction

Introduction: Cardiac rehabilitation (CR) is a multidisciplinary intervention that improves quality of life and reduces the risk of recurrent heart attack. Unlike all known benefits for CR, the patient participation in CR is low. Telerehabilitation has the potential to improve lifestyle and helps patients having long-term compliance with clinician advice. The objective of this study was the development of a web-based cardiac telerehabilitation platform to engage the post-myocardial infarction (MI) patients in self-management of disease. Method: Development process of creating and evaluating a telerehabilitation platform included four phases: (1) need assessment, (2) design the prototype, (3) implement the cardiac telerehabilitation platform, (4) usability evaluation. Result: Cardiac telerehabilitation platform consists of an Android-based application for patients and web-based dashboard for rehabilitation mentors. The modules of the application are daily self-assessment, weekly self-assessment, educational content, stress and sleep improvement skills, medication reminder, online chat, prescribed diet, prescribed physical activity and rehabilitation records. The self-assessment modules allow users to enter the data such as physical activity, diet, blood pressure, heart rate, and body weight. The patient data entries are interpreted in the system knowledge base and colored symbol feedbacks display for patients and mentors. In the dashboard, the mentors review the patient data entries and set the rehabilitation plan for next week. In a beta test of usability evaluation, the mean of SUS score for patients was 75.16, for clinicians was 73.33 and for medical informatics specialist was 72.33. These results showed that the usability of our system was at an acceptable level. Conclusion: The cardiac telerehabilitation platform is a convenient tool for post-MI patients who cannot attend at outpatient cardiac rehabilitation centers for any reason.