Deploying Digital Health Technologies for Remote Physical Activity Monitoring of Rural Populations With Chronic Neurologic Disease.
Kimberly J Waddell, Mitesh S Patel, Jayne R Wilkinson and 5 others
PMID 36968173WHAT IT FOUND
Remote step monitoring worked well for rural Veterans with Parkinson's or stroke, with high device adherence.
However, daily activity was low in both groups. Older age predicted fewer steps, while Parkinson's patients took significantly fewer steps than stroke survivors.
Key findings
01Daily device adherence was high over the 30-day study period, with 97.0% for the Parkinson's cohort and 95.23% for the stroke cohort.
02Participants with Parkinson's disease took significantly fewer steps per day (median 2618) compared to the stroke cohort (median 4832).
03Age was the only significant predictor of daily steps; for every one-year increase in age, daily steps decreased by 175 in the Parkinson's cohort and 357 in the stroke cohort.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTsWhat it means for OTs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The sample size was small (40 participants), which limits the generalizability of the findings. The participants were overwhelmingly male (97.5%) and White (97.5%), so results may not apply to women or other racial groups. The study required access to a smartphone or tablet, which may have excluded individuals of lower socioeconomic status. No in-person clinical assessments (like balance tests) were conducted, so the relationship between specific impairments and activity levels could not be examined.
Declared interests
The authors declare no conflicts of interest. The study used Fitbit devices provided by Google LLC.
The easy way to misread this
Do not interpret the high adherence rates as evidence that the remote monitoring intervention increased physical activity. The study was observational and found low activity levels; it only demonstrated that patients could and did wear the device, not that the device changed their behavior.