LIFELINE: eHealth to inform exercise after critical illness

LIFELINE: eHealth to inform exercise after critical illness

An existing mobile application which monitors movement and heart rate will be made more inclusive and easier to use and tested by patients recovering from critical illness and their primary care physical therapists. This is done in collaboration between users (patients and physical therapists), software developers, researchers and educators and supported by Pharos (Dutch Centre of Expertise on Health Disparities).

Due to improvement in medical care about 70.000-80.000 patients survive critical illness each year. This survival coincides with often long-term physical, mental and cognitive impairments, experienced by both patient and family members (post-intensive care syndrome, PICS). Patients’ physical conditions are often very poor to begin with and even the simplest tasks can make them feel extremely fatigued. It can help physical therapists, who provide the patients with training programs, to better understand this extreme fatigue.

During the COVID-19 pandemic it became clear that many patients have in ICU have additional health problems, might have impaired health literacy, or live in low socio-economic. For reasons related to language proficiency, these patients cannot access current eHealth applications and are often excluded from scientific research or quality improvement projects. This potentially leads to inequalities in health care provision.

The REACH network is a network of rehabilitation professionals in the Amsterdam region providing expert care to patients with PICS. Professionals have recently started to use the Atris mobile app, which is developed by Peercode, an innovative software developer from the Netherlands. Atris can monitor both movement and vital signs such as heart rate, which can help patients and professionals to set daily or weekly activity goals. In this project, all partners will work together to finetune the latest version of Atris so that the application become available and accessible to all potential users, also people with low (health) literacy or whose first language is not Dutch. Next, the revised mobile application will be tested on feasibility and user-friendliness.

Summary
An existing mobile application which monitors movement and heart rate will be made more inclusive and easier to use and tested by patients recovering from critical illness and their primary care physical therapists.
Technology Readiness Level (TRL)
5 - 8
Time period
24 months
Partners
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