Physical Activity Monitor Revolutionises Hip And Knee Surgery

Main Category: Bones / Orthopedics
Also Included In: Sports Medicine / Fitness;  Primary Care / General Practice
Article Date: 25 Mar 2009 - 0:00 PDT

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A revolutionary new physical activity monitoring system which compares actual patient activity with researched norms for individual patient types has been unveiled to support orthopaedic surgeons and GPs in their decision making processes along the care pathway.

Developed by Yorkshire-based Activ4Life®, the cutting edge ProV3.8 system has the potential to save the NHS millions of pounds each year by enabling better clinical decision making by monitoring the activity levels of hip and knee replacement patient's for several months both pre and post operatively.

Furthermore, access to this data would provide NHS organisations with vital information needed to complete 'Quality Accounts' (Lord Darzi, NHS Next Stage Review June 2008).

Offering this insight into the patient's physical activity and pain trends will give primary and secondary care medical experts an objective understanding of how active their patient is, helping them make better, more informed decisions on things such as triage, treatment options, the optimal time of intervention, the best use of hospital resources, individual patient exercise regimes, compliance management, hospital discharge and recovery predictions.

The sophisticated but simple-to-use technology also has huge cost saving potential, with projected savings for a medium sized hospital of up to £500,000 per year through better bed utilisation and a reduction in post operative appointments as well as offering similar savings in primary care.Activ4Life® CEO Ian Revie, said: "Activ4Life®'s cutting edge ProV3.8 brings an additional dimension to the joint surgery care pathway. The visibility of patient activity and pain trends over time will help inform the patient, GP and surgeon of the optimal time for surgery. Moreover, potential problems in rehabilitation can be identified early and acted on."

There is no other system available that provides this type of comparative information over time. This is expected to provide a significant advantage over current questionnaire based measures which are widely viewed as subjective and with limited reliability.

Supporting the innovative device leading orthopaedic surgeon Prof. Maurillio Marcacci, said: "I have been analysing and discussing the Activ4Life® solution Pro V3.8 and I consider it a smart solution able to support policy makers, surgeon, GP and patient in proper disease management. We have a lot of expectations regarding the results and the impact that this solution can provide and now it is available we will start using it very soon."

Small and lightweight, the activity monitor is discretely worn by the patient throughout the day under their clothes. At night it is simply placed into a small docking station and the patient is asked to record, on a level of 1 to 10, any pain they have experienced that day.

Once in the docking station the data is automatically transmitted to the Activ4Life server via an existing mobile phone network where it is analysed against a persona, a researched activity profile assigned based on the patient's age, gender, BMI, operative state and activity levels.

Regular reports are then generated to clinicians to assist them in the decision making process; information which can be accessed at any time from a secure website. Patients also receive the data and have the choice of receiving it by post or email.

Clinical trials in two UK hospitals are currently being undertaken, the results of which will be published shortly.

Each year there are approximately 1 million primary hip and knee replacements carried out in Europe with the number growing at over 4 per cent each year.

Yorkshire based Activ4Life® is committed to helping healthcare providers meet this demand, by reducing costs and improving the level of care patient receive.

http://www.a4lhealth.com

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