Bridging Patients’ Needs and Caregivers’ Perspectives to Tailor Information Provisioning during Cardiac Rehabilitation

Abstract

In remote rehabilitation of cardiac patients, patients need a better understanding of various factors influencing their disease condition to become active participants in their care. Nonetheless, current e-learning approaches in healthcare lack personalization and a deeper understanding of individual patient needs. Most e-learning platforms in healthcare are merely an accumulation of content created by caregivers where patients have no means to seek tailored information to suit specific personal needs. This forms a barrier in patient understanding, debilitating them from becoming active stakeholders in their rehabilitation progress. We identify pitfalls in current approaches and gaps in information needs of patients and caregivers’ perspectives from literature. We organized two workshops - (i) with various professional caregivers involved in coaching cardiac patients, and (ii) with cardiac patients and their informal caregivers - to bridge caregivers’ perspectives with patients’ needs. Further, we prototyped and evaluated two tools to support shared decision making of information needs based on outcomes synthesized from the two workshops. In this paper, we discuss results of the workshops and prototype evaluations. Finally, we discuss how this shared decision making approach supports patient understanding and improves their adherence to rehabilitation goals.