Mobile Health Biometrics to Enhance Exercise and Physical Activity Adherence in Type 2 Diabetes

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Why is this project important?Being physically active and exercising is very important in the treatment of type 2 diabetes, with it helping to control blood sugar and prevent complications. Nevertheless, lots of people with type 2 diabetes find it hard to be physically active and/or stick to an exercise programme, even when doctors and diabetes nurses have told them to exercise as part of their treatment. Research is needed to identify more effective methods to help people with type 2 diabetes increase their everyday physical activity levels, start exercising regularly and stick too the right amount of exercise to benefit their type 2 diabetes management, particularly in the early stages after diagnosis. What is the purpose of the project?In this project we want to see if mobile health technology (i.e. the use of smartphones, wearable technology and apps to support the delivery of interventions) when added into exercise advice makes it easier for people with type 2 diabetes to begin and maintain a physically active lifestyle, which includes exercising regularly. How will we run the project?We will run a study for people who have recently been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes in the UK and Canada. 120 people will be recruited (UK n=60, Canada n=60) and randomly put into two groups. One group will receive standard support to help them become and then remain more active. The second group, in addition to this support will be provide with a wrist watch that can monitor everyday activity and their heart rate, a smartphone app and access to a website. Monitoring of everyday activities will help to encourage the participants to be more active throughout the day. Heart rate monitoring will help them to exercise at home by providing details of what needs to be done in each exercise session, and providing real time feedback on how hard they are working during the exercise sessions. The smartphone app will allow patients to track progress towards personalised physical activity and exercise goals, contact their health care professional, and share experiences with other people with type 2 diabetes on the programme. Finally, the website will allow health care professionals to track patient's daily physical activity and exercise adherence, using the data to provide personalised feedback to patients throughout the programme.What is unique about this project?Usually, soon after diagnosis people with type 2 diabetes attend education sessions. As part of this education they are advised to increase physical activity and exercise regularly. However, many patients with type 2 diabetes do not follow this advice, because they are unsure how to increase their activity, they get little support from health care professionals and they have no-one with Type 2 diabetes to talk with about exercise. The mobile health technology in this project will provide patients with advice on how to increase their exercise, in a similar way to how a personal trainer would. This technology will also enable health care professionals to keep in close contact with patients, and will enable patients to contact other people with type 2 diabetes also trying to become more active. We believe this technology will help educate and motivate patients to increase daily physical activity, and stick to an exercise plan, helping to manage their diabetes. How will the outcomes improve the health of people with diabetes? Findings from this study will help us design a larger study to test whether this mobile health technology would work throughout the UK and Canada. If so it would be cheap to roll out as technology is becoming cheaper and the majority of people already have smart phones.