Supporting Cardiac Rehabilitation With eNutriCardio

Following a heart attack or percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) procedure (to 'open up' narrowed blood vessels in the heart), patients are encouraged to join a cardiac rehabilitation (CR) programme, which provides health and lifestyle advice to assist recovery and reduce risk of future cardiac events. Whilst NICE recommends that CR should "offer people an individual consultation to discuss diet", access to registered dietitians is limited. Instead, CR patients typically receive general healthy eating guidance. Since approximately 50% of patients decline CR, online tools may improve participation. The University of Reading have developed a web-based application (eNutriCardio) that uses a diet questionnaire to assess the quality ('healthiness') of a user's diet. It provides the user with unique, personalised recommendations of foods to increase/reduce to improve diet quality, which aligns with UK public health dietary advice, and incorporates behaviour change techniques. This pilot study will investigate whether supplementing the usual NHS CR offering with personalised nutrition advice from eNutriCardio (intervention) has a different impact on diet quality and cardiac risk factors (e.g. weight and blood cholesterol) than the CR offering alone (control) after 12 weeks. 82 post-heart attack or PCI patients will provide a dried blood spot sample and record their typical diet using eNutriCardio before being randomly allocated to the control or intervention group. Both groups will be invited to participate in an NHS CR programme, but only intervention participants will receive nutrition advice from eNutriCardio. After 12 weeks, both groups will repeat the diet questionnaire and blood spot sample at home. A follow-up questionnaire will be completed after a further 8 weeks. Participants may also join an optional focus group to discuss their experiences of CR and eNutriCardio. This study is funded by the Health Innovation Partnership, a collaboration between the Univers