Register for free to
view the full innovation profile.
Combination of activity, self-monitoring, empowerment, peer group support for recovery and maintenance from plumonary, cardiovascular or cancer incidents.
About
Active+ is an effective, evidence-based exercise class, supported with self-care monitoring technology, education and training, in a peer-to-peer supported programme developed in Huntingdonshire to support cardiac rehabilitation (CR) at Phase 4 in the community. Exercise can improve or maintain health for all forms of long-term conditions (NHS website). For those diagnosed with CVD, once acute treatment has ceased, participants have limited support until they become acutely unwell or frail, at increased cost to health and social care, and are at increased risk of requiring earlier use of adult social care services.
Key Benefits
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).
Applications
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). Active+me can be applied to post Cardiovascular, pulmonary, cancer or any other long-term health condition where fitness, mobility and ongoing health monitoring would empower the patient. It has also been shown by research by other parties that pre-habilitation in the above mentioned disease groups is beneficial for life.