Department of Physical Therapy Professors Susan L. Whitney and Charity G. Patterson received a subcontract award of $1.1 million from Blue Halo. Over the next three years, they will study the feasibility and effectiveness of a prototype app to enhance recovery after mild brain injury or a vestibular disorder. The grant is supported by the Military Technology Enterprise Consortium (MTEC).
The VestAid app was developed for persons living with concussion or vestibular disorders to monitor exercise compliance and to help the therapist determine the difficulty of the exercise. The tablet app provides metrics for how well the patient can keep their eyes focused on the target and how fast they can move their head while doing their exercises.
The purpose of the first phase of the grant is to determine: feasibility of obtaining a representative sample of patients from the military or civilian population diagnosed with post-concussion or a vestibular disorder within 30 days of injury; whether the data is collected reliably and to determine the compliance with the protocol; and the proportion of the participants who will finish the six-week study timeline.
People will be recruited for the six-week study and asked to do exercises three times a day including 10 repetitions of eye/head exercises using the VestAid tablet. The patients will be instructed to follow the study protocol and their compliance with the protocol will be determined using the VestAid cloud-based records.
The primary endpoints will be the acceptability and compliance to the protocol, quantified by finishing daily doses according to the VestAid instructions and a usability questionnaire. The goal is to understand if using the tablet is acceptable to 80% or more of the target population. The secondary endpoints of interest are whether the patient symptoms (dizziness, headache, nausea or fogginess) differ substantially from historical standard of care and the perceived difficulty of exercises based on speed and contrast parameters.
The purpose of the second part of the study is to determine whether VestAid might improve the patient’s speed of recovery compared to the control group (receiving the physical therapy standard-of-care). One hundred patients with relevant vestibular impairment will be recruited and randomly divided into four groups to receive vestibular rehabilitation exercises.
Our overall goals are to determine if people are willing to use the app at home for their exercises and if the Vest Aid app can speed recovery in persons living with dizziness.
The standard of care (top images) often involves having the patient focus on a target and move their head to the right and left while moving their head as quickly as they can, while the VestAid app (bottom images) provides metrics for how well the patient can keep their eyes focused on the target and how fast they can move their head while doing their exercises.