About Live long, live strong
Live long, live strong process applied to osteoporosis
At the core, LLLS is a patient education program and uses the patient’s personal data to design their program and to support their chronic disease management and prevention journey.
The aim is for the patient to become ‘activated’ in their journey, adhere to desired lifestyle changes and improve their health literacy and to ultimately stay out of hospital. We want them to become self-determining in their health care so they can stay well for longer.
LLLS uses telehealth and standard communications and data gathering and evaluation technologies. We align a ‘hyper’ personalised educational therapeutic with the patient’s care planning process and associated intervention delivery (via the designated allied health professional).
The complete patient journey is digitised, so providing the opportunity to collect data that can be used to build a predictive system that solves the problem of lack of patient adherence to modifying unhealthy behaviours and adopting new healthy habits.
Problems we seek to address
- Patients mostly don’t adhere to their prescribed lifestyle interventions and most of the available support mechanisms such as coaching are too expensive for the health system to bear.
- People eventually become sicker and as they age, end up using a disproportionate amount of healthcare resources and this places a burden on the health system and puts them in hospital unnecessarily.
- Patients don’t have the required health literacy to navigate their health choices and the health system on their own. They are not unwilling to get involved, but our previous research shows that even with educated and financially stable people, there is still confusion regarding how to use the health system to stay well and stick to their prescribed plan.
Burden of osteoporosis
Fractures arising from osteoporosis are a massive hidden burden for Australian women and the public purse, and falls are a leading cause of potentially preventable hospitalisations. Also, osteoporosis can be comorbid with other chronic diseases, is associated with the ageing process and is a side effect of many drugs. Research shows that more than 95% of people with osteoporosis have at least one comorbidity and about two thirds have three or more comorbid diseases.
Although the technology and Medicare item numbers are available and there is no shortage of motivated exercise physiologists, evidence shows there is challenges within a general practice context when it comes to diagnosing and managing this condition early.
A realistic view is that many patients may have fallen through the cracks of our health system when it comes to osteoporosis. These patients are at risk of future physical pain, not being able to engage in normal daily activities and are in line for serious long-term physical and mental health complications.
Risk of permanent debility and unnecessary hospitalisations can be mitigated through early detection and management of osteoporosis and osteopenia and the commensurate introduction of interventions targeting improvement in body composition. This is the reason LLLS is focusing on this area as its first use case.
As the first cohort for the LLLS program we have decided that the participants will be women of 50+ age for the following reasons:
- Our SLOWbot research shows there are higher levels of motivation in women, particularly when they reach their mid-fifties.
- Women are central to the ‘operating system’ of the family and can influence children, partners, parents and potentially their community once they are ‘switched on’.
LLLS trial program aims
- Increase adherence to a prescribed lifestyle intervention targeting improvements in body composition, osteoporosis risk and falls risk.
- Improve participant understanding of the importance of exercise and build their confidence and sense of empowerment around their health.
- Collect new data sets around treatment and management during the care planning process, which may ultimately inform health policy and funding requirements.
- Reduce the economic burden associated with PPH by demonstrating increased adherence to a prescribed lifestyle program that aligns with the patient’s care planning process.
Demonstrate the use of personal data being able to shape health decision making to support adherence. - Innovate in the use of digital technologies and telehealth services using the patient’s own data for profiling, benchmarking and in the design of education related to their intervention.
- Increase health literacy about participant’s personal risk and support them to be active participants in their care planning and in their healthy ageing process overall.
- Identify key data sets that improve adherence and provide predictive data that can be used in larger cohorts to better shape the education process around chronic disease management and prevention.
- Support the patient to drive their own care planning process and by using this mechanism better engage with the health system and their health professionals.