METHODS article
Front. Cardiovasc. Med.
Sec. Cardiovascular Nursing
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fcvm.2025.1633106
Open-source customizable website to follow-up physical rehabilitation of cardiovascular patients at home
Provisionally accepted
Ariadna Sabala1Donough Mcbrearty2Raffaella Salama1
Ramon Farre1Ailis Loughnane2
Jorge Otero1
Núria Farré2*- 1Facultat de Medicina, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
- 2Discipline of Cardiology, Saolta University Healthcare Group, Galway, Ireland, Galway, Ireland
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Background: Telemedicine home monitoring of physical rehabilitation in cardiovascular patients, which may substantially improve adherence and, thus, prognosis and quality of life, is an underused practice. Indeed, the Apps and websites available are generic and cannot be easily adapted to each specific rehabilitation protocol. We thus aimed at developing a flexible, low-cost, and open-source telemedicine tool that can be customized and operated by any healthcare professional with just userlevel internet knowledge. Methods: The website was co-designed by an interdisciplinary team, including website developers and clinical experts in physical rehabilitation programs for patients with cardiovascular diseases. The operability and robustness of the website were tested on simulated patients and health professionals, and the suitability of the tutorial for website customization was assessed. Results: The website asks the patient to complete a periodic diary of physical activities (e.g., intensity, type, duration, warm-up, cool-down, subjective effort). At any time, the patient can see graphs of the different types of exercise performed during a selected period. The website allows healthcare professionals to browse patients' data, send feedback messages, and export data in a conventional spreadsheet format. The tutorial for website customization was prepared as a learning by doing tool. Conclusions: The website developed can interest cardiovascular physical rehabilitation professionals aiming at quickly and cheaply setting up an approach for home monitoring programs. This telemedicine tool can also be customized to different clinical applications and is particularly well suited for low-resource settings.
Keywords: Cardiac Rehabilitation, home monitoring, open-source website, healthcare followup, Telemedicine, low-cost
Received: 22 May 2025; Accepted: 11 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Sabala, Mcbrearty, Salama, Farre, Loughnane, Otero and Farré. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Núria Farré, Discipline of Cardiology, Saolta University Healthcare Group, Galway, Ireland, Galway, Ireland
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.