Funding outcome

Title: Promotion of physical activity of children born with severe heart disease using a remotely supervised home-based exercise program using a video-game linked exercise bike (MedBike). The children born with a severe heart abnormality, where they have only one pumping heart chamber (instead of two), will require several live-saving heart surgeries to create a new blood circulation. This circulation place increased work on the remaining one pumping chamber and is not efficient, resulting in these children having early heart failure and progressive reduction in their exercise capacity. The children will often lose their confidence, and when combined with parental anxiety about exercise, often results in these children lacking participation in physical activities. Previous traditional exercise programs for these children have been disappointing and the lack of program completion is a common problem. Our proposed study aim to test a new 8 weeks home-based high intensity interval training exercise program that we believe is more effective in increasing the exercise capacity of these children. This exercise program compliance is further enhanced by provision of live remote supervision from a trainer during the training sessions. The trainer can monitor the child's heart electrical tracing, heart rate and oxygen level during the session, and adjust the most appropriate exercise intensity to maximize the benefit for that child during each session. We will also improve completion rate of the 8 weeks exercise program by being able to provide live verbal encouragement and feedback, as well as having the exercise bike linked to a video game environment to increase enjoyment. We suspect that completion of this exercise program will not only increase the children's measured exercise capacity, but also improve the children and their par