The Smart Health Pilot officially has a fifth demo case, focused on cardiac telerehabilitation. Called CARDIO-TELEREHAB, the new initiative funded under the VInnovate instrument brings together partners from North-East Romania and Noord-Brabant in the Netherlands to explore how digital technologies can make cardiac rehabilitation more accessible, personalised and effective.
Cardiac rehabilitation plays an important role in helping patients recover after a heart attack, but traditional programmes often rely heavily on hospital visits and can be difficult to access or scale. CARDIO-TELEREHAB aims to offer another way forward: enabling patients to continue their rehabilitation remotely while remaining closely connected with their healthcare teams.
At the centre of the demo case is an existing telerehabilitation solution developed by Dr. Heart, a Romanian company. Through a mobile platform and wearable devices, patients can monitor indicators such as heart rate, blood pressure, oxygen saturation, physical activity, sleep and symptoms from home. Healthcare professionals can follow this information remotely and adapt care plans when needed.
The next step is to make the solution even more personalised. Working with Dutch technology company DILACO, the project will explore the use of artificial intelligence to analyse different types of patient data and help identify signs of potential cardiac relapse. Importantly, the technology is designed to support healthcare professionals rather than replace their clinical judgement. The solution will be further tested in clinical settings, with the ambition of generating evidence on patient recovery, usability and cost-effectiveness. The project also aims to understand how the approach can be adapted to different healthcare systems and ultimately expanded to other European regions.
CARDIO-TELEREHAB is also a strong example of what the Smart Health Pilot seeks to achieve: connecting complementary expertise from different European regions and turning promising health innovations into concrete collaborative projects. The partnership between North-East Romania and Noord-Brabant combines expertise in digital health, cardiac care and AI, while creating opportunities to involve additional hospitals, rehabilitation centres and regions as the demo case develops.
Interested in the Smart Health CARDIO-TELEREHAB democase ? Get in touch with Alina Capitanu, ADR Nordest, acapitanu@adrnordest.ro and Carmen Mihai, Cluster Imago-Mol, carmen.mihai@imago-mol.ro