Application of Technology to Enable Community: Cardiac Rehabilitation for Chronic Disease Management

Cardiovascular disease is the leading chronic disease faced by the soaring ageing population in developed nations. The ongoing care of patients with cardiovascular diseases is complex and requires close monitoring across a team of care professionals. Cardiac rehabilitation is a key component of the ongoing care of these patients, immediately following discharge from hospitals. The increasing demands of these services cannot be met easily by the episodic nature of care of hospitals and these demands have become a burden in the current healthcare systems. As a result, there is an increasing shift towards a community healthcare model to address these demands. While a community healthcare model may relieve some of the problems of traditional hospital care to patients being managed in the community, it still relies on proper coordination and care planning among a team of care professionals attending to patient care, especially with the trend of a decreasing nurse workforce. To enable this community care process, healthcare departments and systems have turned to the revolution in information and communication technology over the last decade and its recent affordability, to provide solutions for ongoing monitoring and care coordination of patients. As cardiac rehabilitation is one of the initial components of ongoing care that enables a patient to reach their functional capacity for normal daily living activities, this review will focus on the current research and development of technologies being undertaken and applied for the provision of cardiac rehabilitation in a community care model.