Public Funding for Walk-A-Cise Ltd

Pain in their lower legs on walking is a very common symptom for patients with narrowing or blockages to the blood supply to the legs (termed peripheral arterial disease) and affects approximately 10% of people over the age of 60\. Treatment should include supervised exercise therapy which is usually done as a class within the hospital for 2 hours per week for 12 weeks. This has been shown to improve walking distance and reduce the need for surgery. Currently less than half of UK hospitals provide these classes, therefore patients are just told to go home and walk. This approach is less than half as effective. A recent priority setting exercise in vascular surgery determined that we need to improve access to and provision of exercise therapy, improve education around this disease, and make it easier for patients to get help. In order to improve the availability of exercise therapy we need a new way of delivering the service. There is good evidence that smart watches help to improve walking distance as patients can see their improvement. Other disease areas have used mobile phone applications to provide patient education and videos, which have been shown to reduce hospital admissions. We therefore developed the Walk-A-Cise mobile phone application for patients with peripheral arterial disease which is currently undergoing testing in 3 NHS hospitals. This uses GPS tracking to monitor walking distance, and the data can then be seen by healthcare professionals. Feedback from patients and healthcare professionals has highlighted some key areas that are needed to develop the app further. This will improve the functions of the app so that some specific tests can be done, so that surveys can be completed through the app, so patient can join an exercise class through videos, and so patients can get in touch with their healthcare professional when needed. By building an app that patients and healthcare professionals want to use, is easy to use, and contains a range of options for patients to get education and improve their walking, this will increase the chance of patients using the app in the long-term, and therefore not need to come to the hospital for appointments and lower the chance of needing surgery. Keeping people mobile will also reduce isolation and dependence on others. It will also allow wider access to care reducing healthcare inequality in these patients whom are often from lower socioeconomic groups.