Mayo Clinic app helps patients lose weight

Heart attack recovery patients who used a digital health app were lost four times as much weight than those who underwent 12 weeks of cardiac rehabilitation alone.

The study included 80 patients — 68 years old, on average — who were eligible to take part in cardiac rehab at Mayo Clinic following acute coronary syndrome, including heart attack and unstable angina. Patients were randomly assigned to usual care or cardiac rehab coupled with a digital health intervention that included semi-weekly educational messages, videos and articles with accompanying quizzes about heart healthy lifestyles, tips and platforms to track and log exercise and dietary habits. Researchers collected participants’ weight and dietary habits at baseline and after 90 days.

Study participants attended 30- to 90-minute cardiac rehab sessions, focused mainly on exercise, three times per week. Those in the intervention group were asked to log in twice a week to record their exercise and dietary habits and retrieve educational information on healthy lifestyles, but many did so daily.

Instead of using commercially available mobile health solutions, cardiologists at Mayo Clinic compiled information and recommendations typically given during cardiac rehab to help patients strengthen their heart health and improve cardiovascular risk factors to prevent subsequent events. They then partnered with Mayo Clinic’s Information Technology department to incorporate it into an app and Web-based program that patients could use remotely.

“It’s an example of how clinical expertise and know-how can be married with IT, which is important especially amid consumers’ rapid uptake of apps,” said Robert Jay Widmer, M.D., Ph.D., of the Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research, and lead author of the study. “It may be that these patients felt more connected to their care, as if someone had a finger on their pulse, figuratively.”

The health tool essentially functions as an extension of a patients’ heart team, helping to hold them accountable for eating right and staying active outside of the clinic. Overall, it seems that by adding digital health tools, there is a trend toward better adherence to recommendations.

“With the poor rates of adherence to cardiac rehabilitation and increasing use of mobile/digital technologies, it is plausible that digital health and mHealth could offer a proven preventative solution to help patients with cardiovascular disease,” Widmer said. “The integration of technology into the clinical practice has the potential to affect rehospitalizations of these patients too.”

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Category: Features, Technology & Devices