EAGER-2-TRAIN investigates the usability, feasibility, and effectiveness of mobile apps or mHealth integrated into blended care, used by older adults who are recovering from an acute event.
The population is aging, and older adults have an increasing need of healthcare because of their higher risk of falls, malnutrition, and other acute events. Considering the limited resources and time, it will be difficult for healthcare professionals to address these needs in the near future. mHealth -a subclass of eHealth and defined by the WHO as the ” use of mobile and wireless technologies to support the achievement of health objectives” – aims to improve health system efficiency and health outcomes. Studies on mHealth interventions in rehabilitation showed promising effects for similar populations on functional performance, social participation, and quality of life. This suggests that simple interventions integrated into usual care together with non-eHealth interventions, in other words blended care, can help to improve health outcomes for older patients as well.
Our main goal is to investigate the effectiveness of blended integrated mobile applications, used by older adults to support their recovery from an acute event, regardless of the setting: inpatient, outpatient or primary care.
The research project EAGER-2-TRAIN starts with a systematic review of studies on the use of mHealth by the older population, focused on the period after an acute event.
The second phase will be a qualitative study, in which we interview older adults, their caregivers, professionals and other stakeholders about their views on the use of healthcare apps during recovery.
We use the data from these interviews and focus groups to adapt the mHealth intervention and design the integration into blended care.
In later stages we will conduct experiments to investigate the effect of the mHealth intervention in different settings.
This research project is a collaboration of UNC-ZH, LUMC, HHs and Pieter van Foreest.
