Conclusions
This study demonstrated that remote cardiac rehabilitation added value to conventional cardiac rehabilitation in terms of waist circumference and environmental QoL; however, the results were clinically relatively small. There were no statistically significant differences between the remote technology intervention and reference groups in the 6MWT; body mass; BMI; and physical, psychological, and social domains in the WHOQOL-BREF. These findings support the idea that adding remote technology to cardiac rehabilitation may improve beneficial health outcomes. There was some level of systematic (blinding and selection bias) error during the rehabilitation intervention and samples were relatively small; care must be taken in generalizing the study results beyond the target population. To confirm the assumptions of the added value of remote technology in rehabilitation interventions, more randomized and controlled follow-up studies involving rehabilitees with different cardiac rehabilitation are required.The authors would like to thank the Rehabilitation Center of Peurunka, all rehabilitees, and rehabilitation professionals. The authors also thank project researcher Heikki Kivistö for enabling this study. This study was supported by the Social Insurance Institute of Finland.Conflicts of Interest: None declared.Consort eHealth V1.6.