JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Patients with chronic diseases often must adhere to a long-term individualized home exercise program (HEP) to manage their symptoms, and improve or maintain their cardiovascular health, flexibility and/or strength. Those exercises are provided and updated during physical therapy (PT) visits. Limited adherence (ie, perform the required number of HEP/week) to long-term exercise reduces the capacity of exercise to improve or stabilize impairments related to chronic disease. Lower socio-economic status is an additional factor that negatively impacts exercise adherence. To mitigate this, online apps available to motivate people to exercise could be a viable option. Using an app through telehealth may benefit adults with chronic diseases achieve long-term home exercise program (HEP) adherence. However, because using apps for rehabilitation is an emerging field, the app’s feasibility needs to be evaluated.

Objective:

To address HEP adherence in participants with chronic diseases and in financial distress, defined by people being on Medicaid or similar programs, we evaluated HEP adherence, compliance (ie, percentage of participant-recorded videos sent), as well as satisfaction with the PT care and with the Hudl Technique® app and telehealth in terms of feasibility, compared to standard HEP on paper.

Methods:

We recruited patients scheduled for outpatient PT. We performed a randomized controlled trial where the experimental group received weekly HEP demonstrations through app videos on a tablet and received feedback on their self-recorded HEP video performance from the telehealth-physical therapist. The control group received HEP on paper without feedback as is custom in PT practice. The treating therapist and data analyst were blinded to the allocation. Demographic, clinical, and health coverage information was collected for screening and baseline measurements. Adherence and compliance were evaluated. Both groups completed surveys at 8 and 24 weeks on satisfaction with PT care and, for the experimental group, also satisfaction with the app/telehealth use.

Results:

Forty-five adults with chronic diseases and financial distress were randomized into an experimental (n=23) and a control group (n=22), with respectively 17 and 19 participants completing the 24-week HEP. The experimental group maintained a HEP adherence frequency of 4±2 times/week at 8 and 24 weeks (P=.29), whereas in the control group HEP adherence decreased from 4±2 to 3±2 times/week (P=.07), with a significant difference (P=.04) between groups at 24 weeks. Sixty-eight percent of participants sent videos. They sent on average 68% of the requested number of videos. The average score for satisfaction with PT care was maintained at 87% in the experimental group (P=1.00) whereas it dropped from 89% at 8 weeks to 74% at 24 weeks (P=.008) in the control group. There were no app-related adverse events.

Conclusions:

The Hudl app/telehealth is feasible for delivering HEP and helps participants with chronic diseases and financial distress maintain HEP adherence. Clinical Trial: The full trial protocol is available at ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT02659280).