CARE-ON: continuous cardiac risk and lifestyle profiling
The CARE-ON trial evaluates adherence to a novel, continuous, unobtrusive and patient-friendly lifestyle monitoring system using evidence-based assessment tools in patients with chronic cardiovascular disease.
Lifestyle factors such as physical fitness, dietary habits, mental stress, and sleep quality, are strong predictors of the occurrence, clinical course, and overall treatment outcomes of common cardiovascular diseases such as coronary artery disease and atrial fibrillation. However, these lifestyle factors are rarely monitored, nor used in daily clinical practice to personalize cardiac care. Moreover, non-adherence to long-term self-reporting is common. Therefore, there is need for systems for continuous lifestyle monitoring that provide reliable information to health care professionals and encourage patients to improve lifestyle behaviour over a prolonged period of time. In this way long-term treatment results can be improved and re-events can be prevented in patients with cardiovascular disease.
The main purpose of the Care-On clinical trial is to evaluate adherence to a continuous unobtrusive and patient-friendly lifestyle monitoring system using evidence-based assessment tools, including a chatbot and a wrist-worn wearable device connected to a digital platform. The system is developed as a self-management tool that is designed to motivate patients by goal-setting and objective feedback. Health-care providers are given access to the data so that clinical decision-making can be improved.
In a prospective observational trial in 100 patients, we investigated usability and adherence to the CARE-ON platform, including monitoring of daily physical activity levels, dietary habits, mental stress, smoking habits, and sleep quality.
The final results will be analysed after follow up is competed (July 2024). An interim analysis in 80% of the patients showed that, in line with our expectations, app. 50% were adherent to the monitoring protocol. These preliminary results indicate that continuous, long-term lifestyle monitoring is already feasible in a substantial number of CV patients but that there is still room for improvement.
