Transforming Rehabilitation to Virtually Supported Care - The vCare Project

ABSTRACTvCare is designing personalized rehabilitation programs that will lead to better continuity of care and a better quality of life for patients with stroke, heart failure, Parkinson's disease or ischemic heart disease. It's goal is to provide a holistic approach for transferring rehabilitation pathways from stationary rehabilitation to the patient's home. VCare persues two novel approaches in the field. First, it combines persuasive system design (PSD) with a health psychological model (IMB) which are implemented into a software system to motivate the user. Second, it integrates personalized rehabilitation paths and a virtual coach with graphical representation to support the rehabilitation process. The coach is based on patients' personalized care pathways. It engages with patients so that they meet their individual care plans. This encourages compliance with the patients' rehabilitation programs.