Active+ low-cost, community-based rehabilitation and patient activation programme

HUNTINGDON, U.K. - Nov. 16, 2017 - PRLog -- Active⁺ is a new model for low-cost, community-based and life-long rehabilitation programmes for people diagnosed with long-term conditions such as Cancer, Cardiovascular and Respiratory disease. It uses exercise classes delivered by qualified but non-medical staff, supported with self-care technology, education and training, in a peer-to-peer supported programme developed in Huntingdonshire.

In May 2017, the Active⁺ feasibility programme began with cardiac rehabilitation classes integrating Aseptika's Activ8rlives self-monitoring technology. These classes have now been extended to include people with cancer in partnership with a local cancer charity who has pioneered a new exercise programme for patients before during and immediately after their treatment.

Active⁺ is the result of a collaboration between Huntingdonshire District Council (HDC) Active Lifestyles, Huntingdonshire Community Cancer Network (HCCN) and enabled with Aseptika's innovative Activ8rlives health platform and supported by Eastern Academic Health Science Network (Eastern AHSN). This cross-organisational collaboration has been key to its success and deployment – a model Eastern AHSN is hoping to replicate across the Eastern region to reduce the workload of over-stretched NHS Hospitals.

Improving outcomes for older adults who have experienced a cardiac event (e.g. heart attack or corrective surgery), are living with or beyond cancer or have respiratory disease, reduces their need to access acute care or supported services.

Exercise and education can improve or maintain health for all forms of long-term condition (1). For those diagnosed, once acute treatment by the NHS has ceased, participants have limited support until they become acutely unwell or frail and then the costs escalate for the health and care system, already under considerable strain every winter.

Traditional rehabilitation classes are sometimes described as Level 3 or Phase 3, and follow a NICE-approved syllabus delivered in a hospital setting, over an eight-week period, usually with two classes each week. These are staffed by clinically-trained personnel with very close observation of the patients during exercise. But following discharge from Level 3 rehabilitation, there is often no follow-up processes other than outpatient appointments, in a system already prone to overbooking and long waiting times for newly referred patients.

Active⁺ fills the gap between existing health and care services, to improve health outcomes and minimise expensive interventions resulting from deterioration and unlike traditional 8-week rehabilitation classes, Active⁺ is for the rest of the person's life, made possible through automation by using a digitally-delivered solution.

People who are "activated" (a medical term indicating their increased level of knowledge and higher capability to care for themselves) are more likely to adopt positive behaviours and have clinical indicators within a normal range, resulting in 8% lower costs than those less activated in the first year of support and 21% less in the second year (2).

Active⁺ provides:

·        Safe, supervised and evidence-based group exercise classes, delivered in the community by Physical Activity Specialists (PAS);

·        Education in the use of digital health technologies empowering participants to self-care, delivered alongside;

·        Peer support group(s) during which there are review sessions by PAS staff using participant-recorded data;

·        Evidencing physiologically-based benefits to both participants and stakeholders; and

·        Increased skills, knowledge and confidence of participants to better manage their own condition, measured through Patient Activation Measure (PAM).


For more information contact:

jessica.auton@aseptika.com

https://www.activ8rlives.com