SPLIT Application for Remote Reabilitation

Low back pain (LBP) is the most prevalent musculoskeletal disorder in Portugal and is associated with persistent disability and high consumption of health resources and care. It is a recurrent condition with multiple interrelated episodes that can generate persistent and disabling pain and it is essential that users acquire knowledge and skills for self-management. The Arrábida Health Centers Group (ACES Arrábida) has a interdisciplinary program for stratified treatment of LBPG (SPLIT Program) that was heavily affected by the COVID-19, making the response very deficient to these people with unpredictable future consequences. The social distancing motivated by COVID-19 forced services to create new strategies to respond to the needs and demands of users, including the introduction of appointments and treatment sessions in video format, as well as follow-up by email and phone call. However, the urgency of finding immediate responses to the needs of users, in some cases made it impossible take actions to be implemented, previous planned, with potential risks to both the safety and quality of healthcare provided or for its future sustainability. So that a telerehabilitation service can adequately respond to challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, ensuring safe and effective healthcare, have future sustainability and be adopted on a large scale, end users and other interested parties should be involved in the design and Implementation. The objective of this project is to develop, in co-creation with the end users and other interested parties, a proof of concept of a service of telerehabilitation, using the adaptation of the SPLIT Program, which will serve as prototype.