1 June 2022

Research pick: WhatsApp and physiotherapy - "Effect of WhatsApp-based reminders on adherence to home exercise program"

WhatsApp reminders from healthcare providers to physiotherapy patients improve adherence to home exercise regimes according to research published in the International Journal. Telemedicine and Clinical Practices.

Many physical health problems and injuries respond well to physiotherapy. However, there is usually a component of “self-medication” in the form of ongoing exercises outside the clinical setting. Patients who are improving will do better if they stick with their prescribed regime of exercises and stretches. Unfortunately, as many of us know, once we start to feel better after suffering an injury, illness, or other problem, we begin to revert to our normal daily routines and this may well not accommodate the continuation of the exercises necessary for our complete recovery. With this problem in mind, an international team has looked at how a well-known and commonly used messaging app, WhatsApp, used by millions of people on their mobile devices, might be used to ensure patients stick with their exercise program.

Chidozie Emmanuel Mbada, Mustapha Alabi Lateef, Adekola Babatunde Ademoyegun, Adewale Isaiah Oyewole, and Laminde Maikudi of Obafemi Awolowo University in Ile-Ife, Nigeria, and Clara Fatoye and Francis Fatoye of Manchester Metropolitan University in Manchester, UK, explain that patient compliance with healthcare recommendations and adherence to prescribed exercises, is often a key factor in whether or not the patient makes a full recovery or the best recovery they can. Unfortunately, many patients can be forgetful or find their exercise regime burdensome. The team recognized that mobile devices have been used successfully by healthcare professionals already in many aspects of their work and so might be extended to this particular realm.

They tested a novel approach to improving patient adherence with 20 patients and also monitored 20 additional patients as a control group. WhatsApp reminders were sent three times a week to 20 patients who had been prescribed a home exercise program while the members of the control group received no reminders. All participants, whether they received reminders or not recorded their daily exercise activity in a diary.

The team assessed adherence to the program at three weeks and again at six weeks. They found a significant difference between the WhatsApp patients and the control group with the former reporting far greater adherence to their physiotherapy exercises at home than the members of the control group. The promise is obvious although the researchers concede that they did not take confounding factors such as disease type or severity, marital status, and caregiver presence into account and so follow-up work with a much bigger study group will be needed to account for such variables and to demonstrate the efficacy of WhatsApp reminders. There is also scope, perhaps to look at alternative mobile apps or even simple text messaging rather than focusing on a proprietary tool,m such as WhatsApp, which some patients may prefer not to use.

Mbada, C.E., Lateef, M.A., Ademoyegun, A.B., Oyewole, A.I., Maikudi, L., Fatoye, C. and Fatoye, F. (2022) ‘Effect of WhatsApp-based reminders on adherence to home exercise program’, Int. J. Telemedicine and Clinical Practices, Vol. 3, No. 4, pp.341–350.

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