Encouraging Adherence of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease Patients to Physical Rehabilitation Programs Through Technology

摘要

Encouraging behaviour changes (e.g., healthy habits) is a recurrent problem addressed nowadays by adopting general interventions in hospital or primary care settings. However, professionals count with no time or resources to develop a long-term follow-up for each patient. The application of information technology (IT) on behaviour change intervention may bring a set of benefits such as personalized intervention, remote supervision and continuous accompaniment, increased efficiency, and optimization of human and material resources. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a worldwide current leading cause of death, Physical activity practice is one of the most effective non-pharmacological interventions for the improvement of COPD patients' health state. However, adherence rate is low because performing home programs requires engaged and proactive patients or a continuous supervision by the professional. Both conditions are difficult to be addressed with current interventions. This work proposes addressing the high rate of COPD patients that drop out programs implying personalized rehabilitation at home through technology. This solution is approached by means of a controller that supervises a set of variables (collected from smart devices) and compares them with desirable outcomes in order to make a decision about adjusting the treatment, encouraging the patient or making amendments to the intervention. After assessing a first prototype by professionals and patients regarding usability of devices and preliminary interfaces, the current prototype is being piloted in controlled environments to check if it influences COPD patient adherence.