Myotel MYOfeedback based TELEtreatment

The capacity of our current health care system is insufficient to treat all subjects with (chronic) pain in face-to-face treatments. This means that new, more effective and more efficient ways of treatment need to be developed and implemented. The availability of ubiquitous (public) wireless network infrastructure creates the possibility to deploy new mobile health care (M-Health) services; e.g. tele-monitoring or tele-treatment services. For example, it is expected that tele-treatment services are more efficient as one therapist can treat several subjects simultaneously and intramural care can be replaced by less costly extramural care. These services are also hypothesized to be more effective because subjects train in their home or work environment and they are not bound to the available treatment hours of the therapist; subjects can train much more intense and the amount of training is a key factor in obtaining results.

On such treatment is the MyoTel service. The MyoTel service is a remotely supervised myofeedback treatment. This treatment is based on research showing that subjects with chronic pain have different muscle activation patterns compared to asymptomatic controls and these deviating patterns are hypothesized to contribute seriously to the development and maintenance of chronic pain, when occurring during long periods of time. The treatment therefore focuses on creating awareness of these deviation muscle activation patterns. For this a patient wears a body area network for four weeks during their every day activities consisting of a harness, signal storage and processing unit and a PDA. Dry surface electrodes, incorporated in a harness, continuously measure surface ElectroMyoGraphy (sEMG) of the trapezius muscle. Within the portable storage and processing unit raw sEMG data are processed into percentages relaxation time and this unit provides auditory and vibratory feedback when relaxation time is not sufficient. A technology platform enables data transmission of the patients to a PDA via Bluetooth and from there via one of the available networks (UMTS, GPRS) to a secured server.

This secured server is remotely accessible to authorized professionals so they are able to look at the data of the patient stored historically but also real time and creates the possibility of e-consultation. Preliminary clinical experiences with this service were very promising. Based on these earlier finding the MyoTel project was established that addresses the phases necessary to investigate the market acceptability of this service in two different groups of patients and in different countries and particularly demonstrates the user acceptance and the effectiveness from a clinical and economic point of view for all key actors in the value chain.

Partners in this project are: University of Ghent, University of Bochum, University of Goteborg, University of Twente, Roessingh Research and Development

For more information: www.myotel.eu

The project is funded by:

Europese Unie, E -Ten

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