I was referred to my first physiotherapist after having a recent bilateral mastectomy as the preferred course of treatment and therapeutic response (as opposed to chemotherapy and radiation) to a breast cancer diagnosis. During the appointment, we did a series of exercises that the physiotherapist guided me through alongside the program on her computer, which I have since downloaded, called PhysiAPP.
PhysiApp® – Healthcare engagement at your fingertips. Trusted since 2012.
I’ve never used an exercise APP before for any purpose so I was unbiased and open-minded. However, if anyone has kept a track record of my sentiments towards exercise APPs during the first four weeks of this blog, one would find a certain theme of disliking them. Once I got started, I found the process was user-friendly and intuitive. I did not have to register or log in, which was great because I may not have followed through with the exercises otherwise. I only had to enter the year of my birth to unlock my already created account (1979, baby!) Would everyone have found the process so straightforward? Would this have added stress to less digitally literate clients? What alternatives could be offered?
Shortly thereafter, I saw a new icon appear atop my phone in the form of an alert. After agreeing to the terms of service, privacy policy, and acceptable use policy (all of which I read for the first time ever!), I accepted the cookies and got to the next layer of the APP. I read the disclaimer and the copyright registration, as well as the support, help, integrations, system status, legal and policies, solutions, information security, developer’s information, NHS, branded, data and cookies information. Impressive. Before starting the exercises, I checked out the media press, blog, careers, research, contact, about, overview and investors pages. Next, I linked myself to their social media accounts: Facebook, Snapchat, X, and Instagram. Is anyone else using this APP reading all of this content or is it just me using this educational APP as a ETEC 523 real life example and analysis? This is so much available information and I haven’t even started my first exercise yet!
Today is day 1. I got the alert when I was outside in my garden so was able to complete the exercises in the fresh air and sunshine – a definite benefit to mobile education and physical rehabilitation. When I saw the alert icon atop my phone, I felt a little bit excited, a little bit controlled and a little bit taken care of. I felt care for because someone (or rather, something) remembered I needed to return to my natural state of health and healing. Or is the APP designed to scaffold my own self-care while communicating with my therapist with updates. The APP is fulfilling my need to be tended to and cared for in the absence of my physiotherapist. The exercises were nearly identical to the ones I had been given in my post-surgical pamphlet but it was easier to complete these exercises. Maybe it was the animated videos, the reminders, the pain level recording, etc the gamification of the exercise that made it more enjoyable and rewarding. Let’s see how Day 2 goes.
Thank you for a personalized app suggestion/post. I find apps related to physical fitness very intriguing because they’re very attentive to the user’s goals and they track progress really well. Fitness and well-being apps seem to thrive on tutorial-based materials and a visual component of accomplishments achieved. I completely understand in regards to the privacy terms and conditions. The app I used in the past (I forget what it’s called now), showed available appointments, wellness services and fitness classes based on the user’s current location. Billing, personal information, and location would have been all stored there. It almost felt like an Uber Eats/Uber for fitness classes and health services.
Five stars for the personalization and very useful educational tech. Thanks for sharing this Kirsten, and thanks to those who commented with their own thoughts and experiences. There is so much bring produced and promoted for profit, but to hear about tech that is also providing a user-friendly and valuable health service is most excellent. I understand the hesitation/barrier with creating accounts and sharing health data – this individual who was born before your 1979 date shares many of those sentiments. This personalization would be the reason why I was drawn to your post and am currently commenting. For different medical reasons, my own family doctor has recommended I invest in a quality smart watch, so there is great value in observing the connection between tech and the healthcare journey for me.
I appreciate your description of your process of engaging with the app. All the best to you Kirsten!
Steve
Steve,
Except for a short stint in 2010 when I changed my career from journalist to educator, I have never blogged before; so, thank you for mentioning the level of personalization I provided in this post. I am ignorant to the social expectations or political correctness of an academic blog such as this, but for the last month I have been feeling lonely in my communications and shallow in my posts with this group. I have been having an internal debate about how to best communicate with all of you. So I decided to take a risk and I got real.
I intentionally over-shared in this post as an experiment to see how readers (ie. all of you as my 523 peers) would respond. Obviously, now that I have said that, the experiment is over as I have invited the Hawthorne Effect into the conversation.
https://catalogofbias.org/biases/hawthorne-effect/
Regardless, I feel like my experiment was a success in that comments have been posted, a genuine conversation has ensued, and I got rated 4.5 stars. Since this is my first blogging experience, I’ve never been rated before and the desire for positive public peer feedback has been an interesting revelation. In earlier posts where I received no comments, no feedback, and no rating, I experienced a sense of disengagement from the community as my participation was not validated.
My reflections in this sentiment extend to younger generations today who are programmed for great expectations by design. What happens when those expectations are not fulfilled? How do people feel when they are ignored, or much worse, berated online? What kind of techno societal compensations are we creating for ourselves when our human counterparts do not communicate in an inclusive and equitable manner?
Alan,
I am please that your Garmin watch is doing its job keeping you physically active!
Your corroborating response returns me to a state of normalcy and reaffirms that we all falter with our health and wellness at times.
Using mobile technology tools to our physiological advantage , rather than to assist in our demise , I am learning to understand how technology can leverage natural state of healing. When I return to better health, I will explore a few other apps that may be more interesting for me, like based on yoga or hiking with dogs rather than shoulder mobility, which, while understandably necessary, is super boring on day 3 – zoinks!
Hi Kirsten,
Sending you lots of positive energy on your healing journey.
I went to physio last year and they had a kind of online portal that I could log into, which my physio therapist had uploaded all my exercises. However the very fact that it wasn’t mobile (no App version) created a situation when the only time I remembered to log in was when I was sitting doing work, not the time I was exercising in the gym, so I didn’t utilize it at all. I only did the exercises that I memorized.
You mentioned with this PhysiAPP that you liked the fact that you didn’t to register or log in. Was that because it was less barrier to entry or because of an aversion to share personal medical data? I have mixed feelings about sharing medical data with a technology company. On one hand, I know that it unlocks powerful tools and data sets for personalized healthcare and I do believe that is the future of healthcare. On the other hand I contemplate a scenario where say a private insurance company may get a hold of all one’s past medical history and data and deny a claim or even deny someone insurance based on that (just as one example).
It is interesting, and I think positive that both you and Alan, in his comment, both related that in your experiences with a health APP you felt emotionally supported and cheered on, even though you are of course at the same time consciously aware that it is an APP and not a person.
Rich,
Thank you so much for the positive energy- received through the ether!!
And you absolutely read my mind about privacy, security and insurance companies (- oh my!)
My first thoughts (omitted from original post for considerations of readers’ attention economy): who has access to this information? Is my physiotherapist receiving this in real time? Will my doctor receive updates? Is this information legally bound to my long term disability claim and health care provider?
Regarding the lack of log in, you are spot on on both accounts. First, I already havr a zillion log in accounts for life and i always forget passwords. I probably take up a lot of bandwidth generating new ones or I quit the application altogether. Second, yes I dislike supplying passwords for security reasons, but it is definitely the lesser consideration since I am of the 1980s generation who is still learning the 2020s mantra : “dont go towards the virtual van.” In other words, I have not historically appreciated the intricacies of contemporary online privacy because I did not grow up with it. Don’t get me wrong, it has been a steep learning curve and I am onboard with my own security, but I confess it is not as instinctual as it may be for the more digitally-savvy folks amongst us.
Thanks for this post. A lot of the sentiments you mentioned rang similarities to my own experience as I have taken a dive into managing my personal health for long-term wellbeing, after a year of treating my own health poorly, partly in consequence to some of the trauma experienced from the Shanghai COVID restrictions and lockdown.
I just purchased recently a Garmin Instinct S2 watch, which has a lot of functionalities that focuses on physical health, but in a form similar to your PhysiAPP in which it feels ‘a little bit exciting, a little bit controlled, and a little bit taken care of.’ My watch reports to me each morning of my sleeping habits, giving me a score out of 100 based on my sleeping which is measured by Heart Rate Variability (HRV), to determine if I had a good nights’ sleep, in addition to the other measurements of breathing rate, heart rate, and any motion during sleep.
Notably, the watch also finishes off htis morning report by saying, ‘good job, and get ready for an exciting day!’ or other similar positive statement to cheer me on. I find it amusing, bewildering, and a tad bit scary, that my interaction is with technology in which generates such a emotional response out of me. Although I think somewhere deep down I feel the positivity from the Garmin team or the developers and employees that built this into Garmin, that rectifies some of the unease I feel in which my watch is altering my mood and behavior.