A Socially Assistive Robot for Long-Term Cardiac Rehabilitation in the Real World.

Nathalia Céspedes,Carlos A Cifuentes,Tony Belpaeme,Bahar Irfan,Mónica Rincon-Roncancio,Luisa F Gutierrez,Emmanuel Senft,Marcela Múnera

doi:10.3389/fnbot.2021.633248

Abstract

What are the benefits of using a socially assistive robot for long-term cardiac rehabilitation? To answer this question we designed and conducted a real-world long-term study, in collaboration with medical specialists, at the Fundación Cardioinfantil-Instituto de Cardiología clinic (Bogotá, Colombia) lasting 2.5 years. The study took place within the context of the outpatient phase of patients' cardiac rehabilitation programme and aimed to compare the patients' progress and adherence in the conventional cardiac rehabilitation programme (control condition) against rehabilitation supported by a fully autonomous socially assistive robot which continuously monitored the patients during exercise to provide immediate feedback and motivation based on sensory measures (robot condition). The explicit aim of the social robot is to improve patient motivation and increase adherence to the programme to ensure a complete recovery. We recruited 15 patients per condition. The cardiac rehabilitation programme was designed to last 36 sessions (18 weeks) per patient. The findings suggest that robot increases adherence (by 13.3%) and leads to faster completion of the programme. In addition, the patients assisted by the robot had more rapid improvement in their recovery heart rate, better physical activity performance and a higher improvement in cardiovascular functioning, which indicate a successful cardiac rehabilitation programme performance. Moreover, the medical staff and the patients acknowledged that the robot improved the patient motivation and adherence to the programme, supporting its potential in addressing the major challenges in rehabilitation programmes.

Highlights

Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are a group of disorders of the heart and blood vessels that include cerebrovascular diseases, rheumatic heart diseases and other conditions (World Health Organization, 2011)
The heart rate and the exertion level of the patient are requested by the medical staff regularly to determine whether there is a need for the intervention to decrease the intensity of the exercise, which is determined by the speed and inclination of the treadmill
Our study aims to answer the research question, What are the benefits of using a socially assistive robot for long-term cardiac rehabilitation? Based on the previous literature outlined in section 2, we expect an improvement in the motivation, which could improve the adherence to the Cardiac rehabilitation (CR) programme and the task performance

Summary

Introduction

Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are a group of disorders of the heart and blood vessels that include cerebrovascular diseases, rheumatic heart diseases and other conditions (World Health Organization, 2011). The outpatient phase starts after the patient is discharged, and lasts on average 18 weeks with sessions twice per week. During this phase, the patient performs physical exercises at the hospital, and receives an educational programme about the risk factors to gain healthy habits (e.g., controlling blood pressure, cholesterol, weight, and stress management). In a conventional CR session, during warm-up and cooldown, the medical staff measures the initial and final heart rate and blood pressure. The heart rate and the exertion level of the patient are requested by the medical staff regularly to determine whether there is a need for the intervention to decrease the intensity of the exercise, which is determined by the speed and inclination of the treadmill. Our work focuses on the training step to provide individual and immediate feedback during the workout, and alert the medical staff in the case of critical biomedical values

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