Encouraging physical activities at home for people with multiple sclerosis with mHealth tools: A literature review

Abstract

BACKGROUND:

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic degenerative neurological disease with visual, sensitive, motor, or cognitive symptoms. Physical activities are recommended for people with MS (pwMS) who are at home instead of in a rehabilitation program, to help them to maintain their autonomy. Since a lack of motivation appears to be the principal barrier for pwMS to practice exercises, it is necessary to evaluate whether mobile health (mHealth) tools can offer a solution to stimulate their motivation.

OBJECTIVE:

This literature review analyzes papers to investigate to how a mobile application can motivate pwMS to practice physical activities and manage their fatigue.

METHODS:

We performed an automatic query from digital libraries and analyzed the studies.

RESULTS:

We selected seven articles that responded to our criteria. These studies tested mobile applications that used different strategies to motivate pwMS to practice physical exercises at home and manage their fatigue. A lack of motivation was the main obstacle, but depending on the type of exercises chosen, some application settings seemed to resolve this issue.

CONCLUSIONS:

Studies in this area are limited, although this literature review highlights the need for mHealth tools in which pwMS and their therapists contribute to their use and conception.