Back on bike: the BoB mobile cycling app for secondary prevention in cardiac patients

Persons that suffered from a cardiac disease are often recommended to integrate a sufficient level of physical exercise in their daily life. Initially, cardiac rehabilitation takes place in a closely monitored setting in a hospital or a rehabilitation center. Sustaining the effort once the patient has left the ambulatory, supervised environment is a challenge, and drop-out rates are high. Emerging approaches such as telemonitoring and telerehabilitation have been proven to show the potential to support the cardiac patient in adhering to the advised physical exercise. However, most telerehabilitation solutions only support a limited range of physical exercise, such as step-counting during walking. We propose BoB (Back on Bike), a mobile application that guides cardiac patients while cycling. Design choices are explained according to three pillars: ease of use, reduce fear, and direct and indirect motivation. In this paper, we report the results from a field study with cardiac patients.