Authors (including presenting author) :
Chau HY (1)
Affiliation :
(1) Occupational Therapy Department, Kowloon Hospital
Introduction :
Stroke rehabilitation include home exercise promotes effective recovery. Traditional pamphlet form of home exercise does not ensure patients’ compliance and needs extra manpower to provide reminders. Hospital Authority launched ‘HA Go’ application (app) to provide a platform for healthcare professionals to prescribe home exercise program (HEP) with automatic daily reminder, video review and compliance monitoring functions.
Objectives :
To compare the effectiveness of ‘HA GO’ app and traditional paper-based occupational therapy in home exercise prescription.
Methodology :
Randomized controlled trial. Participants were randomly assigned to control (paper-based HEP with self-reported compliance logbook) or intervention group (HEP filmed as video was prescribed through the app, with automatic reminder and compliance counting functions). They completed their HEP for eight weeks. Primary outcome was compliance of HEP. Secondary outcomes were change in self-care level, upper limb (UL) function, spasticity, self-efficacy, quality of life (QoL) of patients and carers, and participant satisfaction.
Result & Outcome :
Result: Affected by pandemic outbreak, total drop-out rate was 53%. Only 6 subjects in IG and 8 subjects in CG completed full assessment. No difference between groups in compliance of HEP (p=0.65). Motor score of Functional Independence Measure was significantly increased in IG (p=0.027) but no between-groups difference (p=0.17). No differences between groups for measures of UL function, spasticity, self-efficacy and QoL. All participants accepted app or traditional format and agreed HEP benefits their rehabilitation progress.
Conclusion: The study cannot show higher compliance in using app than traditional method. Patients using app may have greater improvement in self-care performance but necessary to support the finding with larger sample size study. Patients satisfying both modes of HEP encourages users to have an option in choosing the mean of prescription. Face-to-face intervention is not replaceable as therapists can monitor patient’s progress.
