Development and validation of a mobile health app for the self-management and education of cardiac patients

The introduction of mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets in health care has propitiated the creation of a new software industry of health care apps that try to help fight against chronic diseases, specially heart diseases. Since there is a lack of apps for the self-management of these diseases, the authors created one, called Heartkeeper. The objective of this paper is to show the steps followed and the results obtained. The process of the creation of Heartkeeper is divided into three phases. The first is the design of the app, focusing on its functional requirements and its general aspect. The second is its implementation, where the operating system of the app is thought, along with the tools used for its development. The final phase is the validation, where Heartkeeper is tested in different mobile devices. The interface created offers a clear application easy to use at first time based on image buttons. The response times of Heartkeeper operations are of the order of milliseconds except for encryption/decryption operations, which can reach 2 seconds in old devices. Heartkeeper were successfully tested in 5 devices with different screen sizes.