Cardiac well-being indexes: a decision support tool to monitor cardiovascular health.

Abstract

Despite the increasing awareness about its severity and the importance of adopting preventive habits, cardiovascular disease remains the leading cause of death worldwide. Most people already recognize that a healthy lifestyle, which includes a balanced diet and the practice of physical activity, is essential to prevent this disease. However, since few simple mechanisms allow a self-assessment and a continuous monitoring of the level of cardiac well-being, people are not conscious enough about their own cardiovascular health status. In this context, this paper presents and describes a tool related to the creation of cardiac well-being indexes that allow a quick and intuitive monitoring and visualization of the users' cardiovascular health level over time. For its implementation, data mining techniques were used to calculate the indexes, and a data warehouse was built to archive the data and to support the construction of dashboards for presenting the results.