Designed in partnership with Dr. Gihan Perera and the Integrated Adult Concussion Clinic at Hamilton Health Sciences, CREATE developed MyHeadHealth which provides patients with customized care plans, instructional videos, and daily symptom and habit tracking.
Chronic concussion can have a devastating effect on people’s lives, with debilitating headaches, dizziness, difficulty concentrating, vision problems, trouble sleeping, mood swings and anxiety. About 15 percent of people diagnosed with a concussion will experience chronic symptoms.
Patients can play an important role in their own recovery from concussion, with healthy lifestyle habits like daily exercise, stretching, meditation, good nutrition and good sleep key to successful recovery. However, many patients face barriers to engaging with these elements of their care plan and to provide their doctor with detailed updates at follow-up appointments.
Recognizing these barriers, Dr. Perera turned to CREATE to design and develop an app that supports concussion patients in their day-to-day recovery.
“Connecting with CREATE was the turning point for the development of this app, they immediately understood the medical and research implications of this project.”
– Dr. Gihan Perera
The MyHeadHealth app was designed to empower patients by providing them with customized care plans, targeted education, and daily rehabilitation activity & symptom tracking.
The app includes a daily tracker so patients can record their rehab activities, nutrition and sleep habits. A symptom tracker allows patients to monitor their symptoms daily. These trackers give patients and their care team much more detailed information about their daily care routine and recovery process.
“Exercise and healthy lifestyle habits have this amazing ability to allow new neurons to grow, increasing concentration and cognition.”
– Dr. Gihan Perera
The Regional Rehabilitation Centre will begin limited deployment of the app in 2022 with a small group of patients to test drive and provide feedback on basic features of MyHeadHealth. Then, Perera and CREATE will continue to build on patient feedback.
The app also holds great promise as a research tool since data collected could help unlock new information about chronic concussion symptoms and how best to treat them.
