Clinical Research Oriented Workshop (CROW) Meeting: May 8, 2015

Present:  Marianne Burke, Nancy Gell, Kairn Kelley (by phone), Ben Littenberg, Connie van Eeghen

Start Up: Celebration of a beautiful day and an interesting picture that looks (maybe?) like Charlie in the Home Town section of this week’s BFP.

1.                  Discussion: Nancy Gell lead a discussion on research design options to study new technology vs. traditional methods of home exercise prescription in physical therapy and related outcomes.

a.       Alternative forms of instructions and support for home therapy interventions for exercise for PT patients exist as an option to photocopied exercise sheets or hand-drawn instructions.

b.      One electronic intervention works as a self-video that can be reviewed with the PT, or as a log with reminder, but hasn’t been tested rigorously.  Key measures: PT therapist perceptions, Patient perceptions, Adherence, Outcomes

c.       Questions:

                                                  i.      Does the alternative improve exercise adherence for usual care?

1.      Measure for both control and intervention groups: Reminder message with response

a.       Intervention app: has a set of 3 questions with each exercise

b.      Depends on app for measurement – a difficult tool, if the app is also the thing being measured as the intervention

2.      Other measures

a.       Call patient – but this stimulates exercise

b.      Drones?  (Ben’s idea)

                                                ii.      Is there a difference in function, pain, number of visits – this is the key from a patient perspective

1.      Pick one group of diagnoses with exercises and outcome measures are in common

2.      Measure with a different mechanism than is the app itself

3.      Common pain measures exist

                                              iii.      Population considered

1.      50-70 year old people with osteoarthritis (not asymptomatic radiographic osteoarthritis) in hip and knee, mild to severe, and not yet operated on.  Patients may be taking medications for pain. 

d.      Design

                                                  i.      Thinking of it as a controlled, comparative effectiveness study

                                                ii.      One patient population?  One clinic?

1.      May be a subset of clinicians in a clinic

                                              iii.      Design process: development, testing, field testing, and eventually a prospective, randomized, controlled trial

1.      Initial test with a small group of patients

2.      Enroll in CTS302 for the fall

3.      Plan the prospective study during the fall

4.      Consider using the “Patient Advisory Group” for support in design (see Sylvie or Connie)

2.                  Next Workshop Meeting(s): Fridays, 10:45 a.m. – 11:45 p.m., at Given Courtyard South Level 4.   Remember: the first 15 minutes are for checking in with each other.  The schedule for future meetings will be re-evaluated in May.

a.       May 15: Kairn on lit review (Connie absent)

b.      May 22: Marianne on topic update

c.       May 29: TBD

Recorder: Connie van Eeghen