What is load and strain monitoring?
Load and strain capacity is the extent to which a person is burdened during daily activities.
Why is load and strain monitoring important?
By measuring this, a physiotherapist or occupational therapist can determine whether a patient is sufficiently taxable to perform daily activities or follow an exercise programme. If it turns out that a patient is not sufficiently loadable, the therapist can help the patient arrange daily activities to fit within the loadability profile.
How can load and strain monitoring be done using smartwatches?
Smartwatches and activity trackers can be used to automate load and strain monitoring. Most models monitor daily active minutes, steps and heart rate. Understanding heart rate versus activity gives the therapist an insight into the load and load capacity in the client's daily life.
3 lessons after monitoring load and strain with Healthy chronos
Over the past year, physiotherapists and occupational therapists have been monitoring a large group of clients with wearables through Healthy Chronos. These included clients during their Covid rehabilitation, COPD patients and cardiac and oncology patients. This has provided a number of insights on monitoring load and load capacity within physiotherapy and occupational therapy.
- Continuous measurement of heart rate data makes it possible to understand the exact moment of overload. Low-impact patients often experience symptoms at the end of a (too) busy day, e.g. shortness of breath or fatigue. It is then impossible to recall which activities were too taxing. Therapists have very easy insight into the exact moment of overload based on heart rate data. Thus, together with the patient, they can quickly form a picture of which activities are too stressful.
- Patients are not aware of the moment of overload. At the moment of overload, the body does not signal that the activity is overloading. As described above, patients often experience residual symptoms at a later time. Monitoring then helps to make the patient aware of potentially taxing activities.
- Home monitoring of load and workload leads to a better conversation about daily activities between therapist and patient. Therapists have a better understanding of daily activities through home monitoring. They tell us that this makes it easier for them to discuss these activities with their patient and how they can be organised differently. The availability to more objective data during the treatment process thus leads to a better conversation.
Understanding load and load capacity is important for large groups of patients. Physiotherapists' and occupational therapists' experiences of monitoring load and strain with smartwatches and activity trackers show that wearable technology can play a valuable role in helping therapists and patients get a grip on load and strain in daily life.
Interested in how wearable technology connects the living environment with the care environment? Then read this blog post.
