Cardiac Care Companion - CCC

Inspiration

Cardiac rehab recovery is not just clinical, it is behavioral and emotional. Patients often struggle with fear of movement, confusion about food choices, loneliness, low motivation, and uncertainty about when symptoms are serious. We built Pulse Cardiac Rehabilitation to support recovery between appointments and make patients feel guided every day.

What It Does

Pulse is an AI-powered cardiac rehabilitation companion that supports patients across the full recovery journey:

Pulse Copilot for daily emotional and recovery check-ins Buddy Network for accountability and peer connection Virtual Care Manager for care-team messaging and appointment scheduling Emergency SOS for rapid escalation and care-team alerts Nutrition Support for heart-healthy food guidance and better meal decisions Exercise Support for safer home workout guidance and confidence-building movement flows Progress Tracking to reflect recovery milestones and engagement How We Built It We built Pulse as a unified Next.js application with integrated frontend pages and backend API routes.

Core technologies:

Next.js App Router for UI and backend routes Google Sign-In and NextAuth for real user identity Gemini for AI-driven copilot and care interactions Resend for SOS emergency email escalation in-memory data models for rapid prototyping of buddies, appointments, sessions, and alerts

Feature structure:

/copilot for daily check-ins /buddy for live buddy connections /care for care coordination /sos for emergency escalation /nutrition for food and meal support /exercise for guided recovery movement /progress for milestone visibility

Challenges We Ran Into

The project started with fragmented app structure and required consolidation Some features initially looked real but were still frontend-only mocks We had to align AI integrations across multiple routes and flows We had to balance real user login with demo rehab data Health-related features required careful escalation logic and graceful fallback behavior Nutrition and exercise needed to feel helpful without crossing into unsafe or overly clinical advice

Accomplishments That We're Proud Of

unified multiple branches into one coherent product implemented a working AI copilot with symptom escalation built real-user buddy connections with Google sign-in wired care scheduling and care-team messaging to backend routes connected SOS to backend email alerts added speech-to-text support for copilot included nutrition and exercise as part of the full rehab support journey created a product that feels like a complete recovery companion rather than a single-feature demo

What We Learned

Recovery products need emotional support, not just task completion In health tech, trust depends on clarity, consistency, and safe escalation Even in a hackathon, backend-connected flows feel much more credible than simulated UI Nutrition, exercise, care access, and emergency support work better when presented as one connected experience

What’s Next for Pulse Cardiac Rehabilitation

move from in-memory state to a real database make recovery data fully user-specific connect nutrition and exercise to richer backend AI flows personalize exercise guidance based on recovery stage and confidence level expand nutrition support into meal planning and smarter food recommendations integrate a real telehealth/video provider add clinician dashboards and stronger longitudinal progress tracking