Currently submitted to: JMIR Cardio
Date Submitted: Jan 19, 2026
Open Peer Review Period: Jan 22, 2026 - Mar 19, 2026
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
NOTE: This is an unreviewed Preprint
Warning: This is a unreviewed preprint (What is a preprint?). Readers are warned that the document has not been peer-reviewed by expert/patient reviewers or an academic editor, may contain misleading claims, and is likely to undergo changes before final publication, if accepted, or may have been rejected/withdrawn (a note "no longer under consideration" will appear above).
Peer review me: Readers with interest and expertise are encouraged to sign up as peer-reviewer, if the paper is within an open peer-review period (in this case, a "Peer Review Me" button to sign up as reviewer is displayed above). All preprints currently open for review are listed here. Outside of the formal open peer-review period we encourage you to tweet about the preprint.
Citation: Please cite this preprint only for review purposes or for grant applications and CVs (if you are the author).
Final version: If our system detects a final peer-reviewed "version of record" (VoR) published in any journal, a link to that VoR will appear below. Readers are then encourage to cite the VoR instead of this preprint.
Settings: If you are the author, you can login and change the preprint display settings, but the preprint URL/DOI is supposed to be stable and citable, so it should not be removed once posted.
Submit: To post your own preprint, simply submit to any JMIR journal, and choose the appropriate settings to expose your submitted version as preprint.
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Cardiac Inpatient Digital Health Utilization and Interest in Virtual Cardiac Rehabilitation: Prospective Cross-Sectional Study
ABSTRACT
Background:
Cardiac rehabilitation (CR) improves patient quality of life, morbidity, and mortality. Unfortunately, it is underused by patients. Digital health interventions offer a solution to increase participation in CR. However, patients’ interest in virtual CR, especially among those in the inpatient setting, has not been fully explored. These benefits have been predominantly demonstrated in traditional, center-based CR programs.
Objective:
The objective of this prospective cross-sectional study was to explore inpatient interest in virtual cardiac rehabilitation among adult patients who were hospitalized with a cardiac rehabilitation-qualifying diagnosis.
Methods:
A Qualtrics survey, comprised of multiple-choice questions, was administered to cardiac inpatients at the progressive cardiac care unit at Johns Hopkins Hospital from January 2020 to March 2024. Sociodemographic and clinical characteristics were retrieved from the electronic medical record. The study included English-speaking patients over 18 years of age with a diagnosis eligible for CR.
Results:
A total of 150 patients were included (age 64 ± 13 years, 38% women, and 57% White). With respect to sociodemographic characteristics, 26% of the patients had a high school education or less, 47% were married, 26% were employed full-time, and 63% had private insurance. Participants with greater than high school education were more likely to perceive smartphones as beneficial for leading a healthier lifestyle (48.1% vs. 24.3%, p=0.01) and learning about illnesses (85.7% vs. 54.1%, p<0.001) than participants with a high school education or less. Participants across all sociodemographic factors expressed interest in virtual CR (overall 71.3%), with non-White participants being more interested than White participants (84.6% vs. 61.2%, p=0.002).
Conclusions:
The majority of cardiac inpatients expressed interest in home-based/virtual CR to alleviate barriers to in-person CR participation. Future work should emphasize digital equity and user support to optimize the widespread adoption of virtual CR.
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.