Authors (including presenting author) :
AU B(1), YOUNG C(2), TSANG P(3), WONG I(4), HL HUI(5), PANG J(5), CHAN J(5), CHING CYN(6), LO TC(6), POON YHP(6)
Affiliation :
(1) Department of Occupational Therapy, Tai Po Hospital
(2) Clinical Psychology Department, Castle Peak Hospital
(3) Physiotherapy Department, TWGHs Fung Yiu King Hospital
(4) Department of Speech Therapy, Tuen Mun Hospital
(5) Information Technology and Health Informatics Division, Head Office
(6) Allied Health Grade Department, Cluster Services Division, Head Office
Introduction :
Tele-rehabilitation is an evolving mode for delivery of service to improve patient access and quality of care. The use of tele-rehabilitation could become more viable with mobile application which facilitates the target patients to receive optimal training at anytime and anywhere with improved training compliance.
Objectives :
To develop an electronic platform for prescription of individualized rehabilitation exercise/ activity, scheduling function; and push e-reminder characteristics to patients with stroke, elderly patients and those with cognitive impairment and functional disabilities.
Methodology :
Various allied health (AH) disciplines, including clinical psychology, occupational therapy, physiotherapy and speech therapy, were engaged to work on the design of the mobile applications, technical details, content of the training videos and therapeutic games for patients with stroke, elderly patients and those with cognitive impairment. With integration to the HA’s Clinical Management System (CMS), therapists could make discipline-specific prescription on types, dosage and frequency of the home-based training, based on individual patient’s assessment. The mobile rehabilitation application was bundled within the Hospital Authority Patient Mobile App (HA Go) for patients’ easy access to the training videos and games via a push reminder according to the prescribed training schedule to enhance training compliance. Remote monitoring on the training compliance in the CMS also became feasible for subsequent training adjustment by therapists. An online satisfaction survey was also pushed to patients upon discharge and to therapists at 4 weeks after prescription. The utilization of the training modules was also monitored by the number of prescribed training.
Result & Outcome :
In Oct 2019, daily activities and motor (physical and oral) training modules were implemented. A total of 132 sets of training videos (33 oral; 56 physical and 45 daily activities training videos) were ready for therapists’ prescription. In light of the rising demand on tele-care for AH services during the COVID-19 pandemic, the scope of training videos was expanded to support swallowing training, patients with musculoskeletal disorders and those required dyspnea management with a total of 189 sets of training videos. Since Jul 2020, therapists could use the cognitive training module in the form of N-Back Game for patients with cognitive impairment. As at 30 Nov 2020, the number of prescribed daily activities and motor (physical and oral) training modules was 13,738 and that of the cognitive training module was 1,646. It was noted that both patients and therapists were satisfied with the mobile application with a satisfaction score of 4.1 and 3.6 out of 5 from patients and therapists respectively. In summary, this mobile rehabilitation application well supported the tele-care services and its application could be extended to provision of tele-information for patient empowerment. The active participation of various AH Co-ordinating Committees and frontline colleagues contributes to the success of this new page of practice.
