JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Atrial fibrillation (AF) is the most common sustained cardiac arrhythmia and is a leading cause of mortality and morbidity. Patient knowledge about AF and its management is paramount but often limited. Patients need to be appropriately informed about treatment options, medicinal adherence and potential consequences of non-adherence, while also understanding treatment goals and expectations from it. m-health applications experienced an explosion both in their availability and their acceptance as “soft interventions” for patient engagement and education. However, the prolific nature of such solutions revealed a gap in evidence base regarding their efficacy and impact. Virtual Patients (VPs), interactive computer simulations, have been used as learning activities in modern health care education. VPs demonstrably improved cognitive and behavioral skills and thus they have been effectively implemented across undergraduate and postgraduate curricula. However, their application in patient education has been rather limited so far.

Objective:

This work aims to implement and evaluate the efficacy of a mobile deployed VP regimen for the education and engagement of AF patients on crucial topics regarding their condition. A mobile VP application is developed with the goal of each VP being a simple scenario with a set goal and very specific messages and will be subsequently attempted and evaluated.

Methods:

A mobile VP player application is created so as to be utilized for the design of three educational scenarios for AF management. A pseudo-randomized control trial for the efficacy of Virtual Patients (VPs) is planned to be executed in three sites in Greece, Ukraine and Kazakhstan for AF patients. After recruiting and exclusion, patients from Greece, Kazakhstan and Ukraine are aimed to participate in the study. The A Welch’s t-test will be used to demonstrate the performance of patients’ evaluation of the VP experience.

Results:

Our study is at the development stage. A preliminary study regarding the system’s development and feasibility has started in December 2022. The results of our study are expected to be available in 2023 or when the needed sample size is achieved.

Conclusions:

This study aims to evaluate and demonstrate the first significant evidence for the value of VP resources in outreach and training endeavors for patients’ empowerment and healthy habit building on AF.