What are we trying to do?

Improve the delivery of evidence-based rehabilitation for prevention (primary and secondary) of falls to support better outcomes for older adults.

Why is this important?

Rehabilitation has good evidence for effectiveness following a fall, enabling independence, and preventing future falls by up to 40% and protecting bone health.

However, there is poor application of the evidence based to practice within the rehabilitation setting. Poor adherence to rehabilitation exercises by older adults and poor fidelity to delivering the evidence-based programme by health professionals leads to up to a 30% reduction in efficacy of rehabilitation on falls and other clinical outcomes.

How are we doing it?

Motivate Me (health professional app) and My Activity Programme (patient app) are a rehabilitation implementation strategy designed to support fidelity and adherence to rehabilitation exercises through evidence-based behaviour change techniques, including goal-setting (including personalised prescription of exercises), personalised feedback, self-reporting of exercise and monitoring.

The apps can also aid transfer to follow-on community exercise programmes (further supporting adherence/fidelity).

We have currently completed a Feasibility RCT and are developing a hybrid type two implementation trial to explore both effectiveness and implementation and scale-up of the apps for rehabilitation.

Who are we working with?

• Later Life Training
• mHealth Technologies

Who is it funded by?

• NIHR

Resources

• Using Smartphone TechnolOGy to Support an EffecTive Home ExeRcise Intervention to Prevent Falls amongst Community-Dwelling Older Adults: The TOGETHER Feasibility RCT PubMed (nih.gov)

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