Smartphone application-based pulmonary rehabilitation in COPD: a multicentre randomised controlled trial.

Area of Science:

• Pulmonology
• Digital Health
• Rehabilitation Medicine

Background:

• Pulmonary rehabilitation (PR) is crucial for managing chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).
• Access to traditional face-to-face PR programs is often limited for patients.
• Limited access necessitates exploring alternative delivery methods for PR.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the impact of a 12-week mobile app-based PR intervention on COPD patients' quality of life and exercise capacity.
• To compare the effectiveness of the mobile app intervention against an enhanced standard-of-care control group.
• To assess the safety and adherence of the mobile application in COPD management.

Main Methods:

• A multicentre, randomized controlled trial involving 278 COPD patients across 18 sites in Germany and Switzerland.
• Patients were assigned to either a mobile app intervention group (IVG) or a control group (CTG) receiving enhanced standard-of-care.
• Outcomes measured included quality of life (COPD Assessment Test - CAT) and exercise capacity (1-minute sit-to-stand test - 1MSTST) at 12 weeks.

Main Results:

• The mobile app intervention group showed improvements in CAT and 1MSTST from baseline, though not statistically significant compared to the control group.
• Adherent users (using the app ≥3 days/week for ≥75% of the study) demonstrated significantly greater improvements in 1MSTST compared to non-adherent users (p=0.006).
• The mobile application did not raise any safety concerns during the trial.

Conclusions:

• Application-based PR demonstrated improvements in COPD outcomes from baseline.
• Adherent users of the mobile PR application experienced enhanced exercise capacity improvements compared to non-adherent users.
• While not statistically superior to standard care, the app-based PR shows promise for COPD management and addressing access barriers to PR.