Telerehabilitation Decision Support System: Pilot Testing Protocol

Incidence of Treatment-Emergent Adverse Events (safety)

Participants will be monitored for adverse events during telephone or face-to-face contacts as part of the intervention phase and during follow-up assessments. Any adverse events related to the treatment will be reported via an adverse events form on the system database. Falls diaries will be collected weekly from participants during the intervention and monthly for up to 6 months after completion of the intervention.

Recruitment Rate (acceptability)

percentage of recruited participants that were eligible

Feasibility (protocol deviations/problems)

Incidence of protocol deviation and/or implementation problems reported during the intervention.

Participants experience using the system (usability)

Participants experience using the system gathered via qualitative feedback throughout the testing period and post-intervention via exit interviews

Functional Gait Assessment (FGA)

test that assesses complex gait tasks (e.g. walking with head turns or stopping and turning, 5 minutes).

Mini Balance Evaluation Systems Test (Mini-BESTest)

a 14-item test that assesses dynamic balance, on a scale of 0 (indicating severe balance impairment) to 28 (representing normal balance with a total score of 28 points).

Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA)

includes sections on visuospatial/executive function, naming, attention, language, abstraction, memory and orientation to time and place (6 questions) with a scor range from 0-30, with a higher score indicating better cognitive function.

EuroQol five dimensional descriptive system (EQ-5D-5L)

Measure of quality-adjusted life years (QALYs). EQ-5D-5L is a standardized, valid and reliable simple, generic measure of health status for clinical and economic appraisal. The respondent is asked to rate their health status on these five dimensions from 1 to 5 respectively as no problems, slight problems, moderate problems, severe problems, and extreme problems. The EQ VAS (Visual Analogue Scale) records the respondent's self-rated health on a 20 cm vertical, visual analogue scale with endpoints labelled 'the best health you can imagine' and 'the worst health you can imagine'. The respondent is asked to mark an X on the scale to indicate "how your health is TODAY" with a higher score indicating better health-related quality of life

Falls

Occurence of falls, and reasoning if any falls took place, self-reported via a falls diary.

System performance

We will also compare the TeleRehaB DSS predicted versus observed patient outcomes on the EQ-5D-5L, and secondary outcome measures, to assess the system performance

eHealth Literacy Assessment (eHEALS)

a 10-item likert scale questionnaire that evaluate's patients' skills in finding, evaluating and applying electronic health information. Responses range from 1 (strongly disagree, to 65 (strong agree), with total scores indicating levels of eHealth literacy. This will be used to help validate the AI-model in terms of participant allocation into the high-tech versus low-tech solution.

The Senior technology acceptance & adoption model (STAM)

is a 38-item questionnaire, with items rated on a 1-10 Likert scale to measure factors influencing technology acceptance among older adults, with a higher scores indicating greater perceived digital literacy.