JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Cardiac rehabilitation (CR) is an evidence-based approach for preventing secondary cardiac events. Smartphone applications are starting to be used in cardiac rehabilitation to give patients real time feedback on their health, connect them remotely with their medical team, reduce the cost of cardiac rehabilitation, and allow them to perform their rehabilitation at home. The usage of smartphone apps is becoming ubiquitous and has real potential in impacting patients in need of CR. Currently, the published evidence is not strong enough to confirm that the usage of smartphone apps with CR can substantially improve clinical outcomes for cardiac patients. This paper provides critical summaries of existing research studies with an in-depth analysis of not only individual studies, but also the larger patterns that have emerged with smartphone application usage in CR as well as their significance for practice change. Results from this systematic review reveal that smartphone apps being used in cardiac rehabilitation have better clinical outcomes related to exercise capacity if the app auto-records information or provides real-time feedback for the participant to see their progress, compared to apps that only educate and encourage usage while making the participant manually log CR activities. Current evidence in the literature suggests nonhomogeneous results for successful usage of smartphone applications in CR. More clinical trials are needed that implement smartphone apps with bio- sensing capabilities, which can automatically log results and send results out to providers on a real-time dashboard. Future smartphone app research can focus on incorporating the observed successful components related to CR in order to best support cardiac patients for better patient outcomes, quality improvement, and increased patient safety.