📢 Early bird deadline EXTENDED 16 January 2024 31 January 2024. Register now ➜

ICC Sydney

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Treating persistent pain with online rehabilitation programs – the future is here

Session outline

Over the past decade, mhealth has been developed and become available direct to consumers, however, the research evidence base of efficacy has been slower to follow. The potential benefits of ehealth include reduced costs, direct consumer access, availability in rural areas and countries with reduced access to healthcare. As pain is the worldwide leading cause of years lost to disability, mhealth pain programs that reduce pain, improve function, mood and quality of life offer significant advantage.

Development of programs is not necessarily easy and needs clinicians, consumers and researchers involved to develop evidence-based content. mHealth can be delivered across a variety of platforms including phones, tablets and computers and be unsupervised (no clinicians involved), supervised (with clinicians interacting with participants) or a hybrid model. There can be significant costs involved.
In mhealth for online pain program, typical content includes a mix of monitoring of pain, education, exercises and cognitive behavioural strategies. Programs may also provide biofeedback through wearable technology, engage consumers via virtual reality and offer the opportunity to personalise therapy to the individual.

Engagement of consumers and effecting change can be difficult and may involve different behavioural change strategies which can be interwoven into a mhealth program.
The workshop will cover these topics and more.

Learning outcomes

This workshop will explore the development, use and research of new online rehabilitation programs to treat pain and function. The discussion will cover how to put together components of a program, how the programs are being used as treatment and the research evidence for their efficacy in treating pain, function and mood.

Target audience

Those interested in developing new technology or learning about the evidence for programs that have been developed so far will find this topic fascinating. This will be of interest to

  • Allied health
  • Medical practitioners
  • Nursing
  • Researchers

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