Mobile health application platform 'Corrie' personalises and empowers the heart attack recovery patient experience in the hospital and at home for an underserved heart attack survivor

Abstract

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide with an estimated 17.5 million deaths annually, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). CVD prevention efforts have the potential to prevent the majority of these deaths by supporting guideline-directed medical therapy (GDMT) and lifestyle modification. Mobile health (mHealth) has the potential to address this gap, but has limited evaluation in clinical studies to date. We present the case of a middle-aged patient of low socioeconomic status, with multiple comorbidities, and no prior smartphone experience, who suffered an acute myocardial infarction (MI) and was given the Corrie intervention while hospitalised. The patient demonstrated improvement in lifestyle modification, adherence to GDMT and post-MI recovery through 2.4 years follow-up. This case supports (1) the potential of mHealth interventions to enhance patient experience and outcomes, (2) intuitive design for adoption and improvement in end user experience and (3) the capability of mHealth to reach and empower underserved patients.

Keywords: cardiovascular medicine; health informatics; ischaemic heart disease.

Conflict of interest statement

Competing interests: FAM and SSM are founders of and hold equity in Corrie Health, which intends to further develop the digital platform. This arrangement has been reviewed and approved by the Johns Hopkins University in accordance with its conflict of interest policies.

© BMJ Publishing Group Limited 2020. Re-use permitted under CC BY-NC. No commercial re-use. See rights and permissions. Published by BMJ.

Figures

Figure 1

Corrie iPhone and Apple Watch app for patients with acute myocardial infarction. (A) Medication adherence tracking and reminders; (B) vital signs monitoring, integrated with Apple Health. Realtime monitoring of heart rate and step count with the Apple Watch via Apple Health; (C) educational modules including videos, animations via Nucleus Media and articles at the 6th grade reading level. Completing modules is incentivized by ‘Heart of Gold’ reward; (D) Healthcare provider directories and appointment reminders which integrate with Apple Calendar. This figure was created by the coauthors with key technical assistance from Corrie engineering and Lead iOS Developer Ryan Demo. Note: Corrie is also available on all newer iPhone and Apple Watch models.