Using a mobile phone to teach people with COPD how to manage their condition has led to a fall in hospital admissions, found Taiwanese researchers.
Their pilot home coaching programme, published in European Respiratory Journal, uses a piece of software installed on patients’ mobile phones that encourages them to walk in time to music every day to a rhythm matched to their lung capacity. At the same time, the training parameters and respiratory data are recorded and transmitted to doctors.
Dr Han-Pin Kuo, of Chang-Guang Memorial Hospital in Taipei, designed the software after working out that patients were reluctant to follow intensive activity programmes offered in hospitals.
This meant the benefits of such activities – key to rehabilitating patients with COPD – were less effective. But having such a rehabilitation programme at home would increase compliance, he reasoned.
The music is installed on patients’ mobile phones and the rhythm is preset at 80% of the patient’s maximum respiratory capacity, identified beforehand and adjusted monthly. Clinical data whilst the patient is exercising is sent back to a website.
Forty-eight patients, aged 40- 80 with moderate to severe COPD were included in the pilot. All were given a leaflet and DVD with advice on a walking programme whilst half also got a mobile phone with the software.
The differences in the two groups after one year were significant - 22 of the 24 subjects (92%) in the group given the phone did the walking exercise daily but only nine subjects in the other group (38%).
The training also led to improvements in lung function, increases in inspiratory capacity from the third month and led to a fall in hospital admissions - only two subjects in the mobile phone group were admitted whilst 22 were in the control group.
A larger-scale study is now planned in Taiwan. If successful, this simple, easy and cheap technique could now be used for the remote supervision of other chronic diseases such as diabetes said Dr Kuo.