A Brazilian team built a free smartphone app that lets physiotherapists assign home exercises to neurological patients and track whether they do them. Ten patients tried it; seven finished. No evidence yet that it improves recovery.
The app was developed in five stages following a prototyping paradigm, with input from a five-physiotherapist expert committee, ten physiotherapists who reviewed the layout, and ten physiotherapists plus ten patients who tested the working prototype for one week.
In the pilot test, all ten physiotherapists reported no difficulty using the app, while the seven patients who completed the week reported minor issues — finding the exercise program, forgetting to send feedback, editing profile details, and small font size — but rated solving each problem as easy to very easy, except one patient with great difficulty reading and one with moderate difficulty editing their profile.
Three of the ten patients dropped out of the pilot, reporting forgetfulness and lack of time; the authors note that difficulty using the app may have contributed to these dropouts.
Single-blind randomized controlled trial. Sixty-four participants were randomized across two intervention arms and assessed at twelve weeks for the primary outcome…
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