Research project Online rehabilitation system for COVID-19 patients with long term cognitive problems
How can patients with severe and long-term cognitive problems after Covid-19 be rehabilitated? In this project, we design an online-rehabilitation system. It helps patients to better understand their problems, the system supports their cognitive training, and increases their motivation to work with rehabilitation online.
A large number of patients have severe long-term cognitive problems after a COVID-19 infection. They experience concentration problems, fatigue and memory disorders, preventing them from returning to work and living a decent life.
Rehabilitation clinics are overwhelmed with such patients and the waiting lists are long. Therefore, this project aims to develop a system for online rehabilitation, supporting selfcare.
The first rationale of this project is to provide patients with an online-rehabilitation system that makes it possible for them to better understand their problems, train to overcome the problems, and increase their motivation for online training.
The second rationale is to provide the rehabilitation clinics with a system that can support the whole rehabilitation process, and integrate existing systems and services. The system is based on an innovative visualization technology supporting design, implementation and also execution of the process. The clinicians should be able to select different training methods in the system, customize the training, and act as on-line coaches for the patients.
Project description
This project aims to develop better solutions for online rehabilitation of patients with long-term cognitive symptoms after COVID-19. It is based on existing prototypes and already performed testing of the prototypes with patients.
Background
Over the past years, the world has been hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, which can cause cerebral infarctions and bleeding, microthrombosis, and inflammation of the brain. Experience from Italy and Spain shows that 2/3 of the intensive care patients had motor impairments and 1/3 cognitive, which is consistent with literature data from previous corona epidemics, i.e. SARS and MERS.
In these epidemics, the cognitive disorders persisted for several years and 1/5 of the patients had not returned to work after 3 years. Against this background, an increase in relatively young patients with issues regarding their cognitive functions, and the need for rehabilitations can be expected.
With the help of an online support for ADL functions (e.g. to be able to adapt their everyday life based on their brain fatigue or to find strategies to compensate for impaired memory), patients can receive additional support for their rehabilitation. Previous studies have showed that computer-based reminders can help stroke patients in their rehabilitation with both increased motivation and improved clinical status. This type of IT-support can also reduce the need for rehabilitation to take place at healthcare clinics, and, instead, much can take place at home.
In this project, a new visualization technology – Information Manager – will be used. The technology coordinates physical flows, manual workflows, automated workflows and information flows. The technology can also integrate different types of systems. It has its base in integration solutions such as EAI engines (message brokers) and business process management systems (process brokers), earlier developed by the team members behind Visuera Information Manager. One of the major benefits of the solution is that the same technology and tools are used in all steps of development as well as in the execution step.
Impact
There is a large potential for the developed system to be used by many other care providers in the country, both public and private. Primarily, the project does not intend to commercialize this system as a product, but there is a large potential in that Visuera Integration, Telia Company, or other private actors would like to develop an even better system based on our results, which we see as positive. Such a solution could be translated into other languages and the internationalization of the project results could lead to the opening of new markets.
Project members
Project managers
Erik Perjons
Associate professor
Members
Uno Fors
Researcher
Martin Henkel
Docent
Kristian Borg
Marika Möller