Quantifying At-Home Physiotherapy Participation: SPARS vs Self-Reported Diaries.
Matthew Rezkalla, Philip Boyer, David Burns and 2 others
PMID 40678281WHAT IT FOUND
Smartwatch data agreed closely with patient diaries on home exercise participation during the first two weeks of shoulder rehab.
Diaries reported slightly more days than the watch, but the high agreement suggests wearable sensors are a viable alternative to self-report.
Key findings
01There was high agreement between self-reported diary participation and SPARS-predicted participation, with an intraclass correlation of 0.72.
02Patients reported a mean of 9.67 days of exercise in diaries, while SPARS predicted 8.72 days.
03SPARS technology, developed by the study authors and licensed to a company they hold equity in, was used to measure participation.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTs
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What it does not show
The study only evaluated participation rates, not adherence to specific exercises, duration, or quality of performance. There was no ground truth for at-home exercise participation because the data were unsupervised. The agreement was only measured for the first two weeks of treatment, a period when patients are typically most adherent. Authors had financial conflicts of interest related to the SPARS technology.
Declared interests
Two authors were involved in the development of the SPARS technology, and one is a cofounder with equity in Halterix Corporation, which has licensed the technology.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume smartwatch data is identical to patient diaries. The watch predicted fewer exercise days on average (8.72 vs 9.67), and the study did not verify if the exercises were performed correctly or completely, only that activity was detected.