Home-based Empowerment Through Physical Exercise Assisted by Technology for Frail Patients

Condition(s) studied

Investigational drug(s) / intervention(s)

Home-based walking training: Patients enrolled in the experimental group will undergo an exercise-based intervention at home guided by a smartphone application. Each exercise session will encompass 8 walking minutes at home at a fixed slow speed to be repeated twice per day. Every week the speed will be slightly increased to maintain an adequate training stimulus.

Study summary

This project, that lays in Health Ageing mission promoted by European Commission, aims to address the issue of frailty, a condition that poses the elderlies to increased vulnerability, deconditioning, and, ultimately, loss of independence. Frail people are exposed to a significant increase in mortality, hospitalizations and falls, with high burden for families and for the National Health Service (NHS). Nowadays, the detection of frailty is performed with more than 75 validated measures including questionnaires, scales and technologies. Moreover, frailty is usually not properly addressed, due to the limited resources in terms of personnel and programs in the NHS, and the frail patient is at high risk to be institutionalized and to definitely lose his functional independence. The project here proposed aims to address these topics, by combining clinical, rehabilitation, and engineering expertise in a unique team.

Indeed, the projects aims to empower the frail people with an home-based app-guided rehabilitation program. In order to easily develop a largely tested home-based walking program, we aim to design and develop an application, compatible with any device, that will enable each person to easily exercise at home just few minutes per day. Through a randomized-controlled clinical trial, we will verify the effectiveness of the rehabilitation program on frailty status, in promoting patients' independence, quality of life and ARTIDE score.

Eligibility

Primary outcome measure(s)

• Short Physical Performance Battery — From enrollment to the end of treatment at 3 months
  This battery includes three different tests focusing on balance (side-by-side, semi-tandem and tandem position), gait speed (4-meter test) and lower-limb strength (5-time sit-to-stand test). The scale score ranges from 0 (lowest) to 12 (higher) by summing the points obtained in the three tests.

Trial sites (2)

More University Hospital of Ferrara trials in Italy

Other trials for the same condition