An app featuring an avatar “nurse” could be used to help people recognise the symptoms of a heart attack so that they know what to do next, a European conference has been told.
A presentation at Acute Cardiovascular Care 2016, Lisbon, Portugal, set out how integrating the technology can assist patients.
Devised by Jintana Tongpeth, a PhD student at the School of Nursing and Midwifery, Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia, the app was tested in two phases.
The first was “action research” in which feedback on the design of the interactive app was collected in cycles from cardiologists, patients and gaming IT experts.
The avatar, a nurse named Cora, teaches heart attack warning signs and symptoms, and what to do when having heart attack in just eight minutes.
The idea is that patients who have suffered a heart attack would be given the app before they are discharged from hospital as a way of increasing awareness.
Cartoon-like characters are less intimidating than a video with a doctor in a white coat giving a lecture on what to do, said senior author Professor Robyn Clark, professor of nursing at Flinders University.
“Cora is engaging, fun, and gives good feedback. Patients of any age can answer her questions by pressing yes/no on the screen,” she added.
The second phase was tested with ten heart attack patients. The researchers found that participants’ ability to recognise symptoms improved by 24% and their knowledge about what to do increased by 15%. More than 87% of patients said they were satisfied with the technology and found it easy to use.
Ms Tongpeth said: “Patients said the app made it easy to learn. They enjoyed using it and said it had helped them to be more confident about recognising and managing heart attack symptom in the future.”
The app has the potential to replace traditional booklets, brochures and complex medical language in-patient education. The dialogue will also be translated so that Cora speaks 144 languages.
“The medical profession has been slow to integrate technology into practice,” said Prof Clark. “Robots can do surgery but we’re still waiting for doctors to catch up with hairdressers who send appointment reminders by text message. The World Health Organisation says 85% of the planet has access to Wi-Fi so there is huge potential for communicating.
“We want to reach all patients regardless of what language they speak, how old they are, and their level of literacy. To use the app you don’t need to read or speak English, and you can get most of the messages from the pictures. It is also suitable for older patients with one message per screen and large buttons.”
The next stage in the research is to test the app’s ability to improve outcomes after a heart attack in a randomised controlled trial.
Development and acceptability evaluation of an avatar-based education application for improving knowledge of symptom recognition and response for patients with acute coronary syndromes. Acute Cardiovascular Care 2016
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