Low Cost Tool for Compliance and Treatment Tracking of Low Back Pain Patients

DESCRIPTION provided by applicant Innovative Design Labs IDL proposes to develop and deploy a low cost measurement system which tracks exercise compliance and enables remote health coaching for patients with low back pain Back pain is the most common cause of activity limitation in individuals younger than years and is the second leading cause of disability in the U S afflicting between and of the population It is the leading cause of lost wages and accounts for more than surgical procedures per year with a total over $ billion annually spent on treatment and care Dynamic motion of the lumbar spine has been shown to change with disc degeneration and pain Furthermore these aberrant motion patterns can be improved with prescribed physical therapy and exercise In practice therapists qualitatively monitor back pain treatments through series of guided exercises and stretches in the clinic and then prescribe a protocol of exercises and stretches to be performed in the home It is difficult to track performance and compliance over long periods of treatment This research program aims to enable the long term treatment tracking of patients with chronic low back pain A novel low cost highly accurate system that tracks and encourages compliance with a patients exercise protocol will be developed in phase II Hypothesis We hypothesize that a device which measures compliance to physical therapy regimens will increase patient participation Specific Aims Develop a production ready prototype hardware system Design and implement easy to use cloud enabled software for patients and health coaches and Conduct a human study to evaluate the effect of the system on compliance and quality of life PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE Low back pain one of the most prevalent health complaints in the US with an estimated of the population developing back pain at some point in their life is leading to lost wages more than surgical procedures per year and over $ billion spent annually on treatment and care Regular exercise therapy is widely used to treat chronic low back pain because it is one of the few evidence based treatments however adherence to home exercise therapy is reported to have rates as low as A low cost easy to use tool for monitoring home exercise therapy could result in increased compliance and improved outcomes