New tool shows promise in helping people manage traumatic brain injuries one pace at a time

LONDON, ON- A team at Lawson Health Research Institute and St. Joseph’s Health Care London, has created a new online tool called MyBrainPacer™ App to help assist people living with a mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI).

mTBI’s, including concussions, may come with lasting effects that can alter a person’s life.  Although a person with an mTBI may appear fine on the outside, many have to pace their day-to-day activities in order to allow the time needed for the brain to properly heal. That’s where the MyBrainPacer™ App can come into play as a helpful resource.

“By documenting activity levels over time, patients and their clinicians can better understand what activities are linked to worsening symptoms, which they can therefore avoid,” explains Dr. Dalton Wolfe, Lawson Scientist.

The online application is being used as a research tool, allowing Dr. Wolfe and his team to track its efficacy. Much like point tracking used by dieters to monitor food choices, through MyBrainPacer™ App, users can assign values to tasks like driving, grocery shopping, screen use and exercise so they can plan and pace their daily activity. Individual users are given a total number of points per day that will keep their persisting symptoms in the “safe range.” As users track their symptoms through the app, the app adjusts the daily point value to what is best for the user. The app is based on St. Joseph’s Pacing and Planning Program, which has helped hundreds of concussion patients achieve their recovery goals. 

“By putting the app in the hands of patients and the clinicians who treat them, the app has the potential to give us data that traces the recovery patterns of patients and how that relates to the activities that they participate in over time,” adds Dr. Wolfe. “This will enable us to document safe levels of activity for persons with specific characteristics or symptom profiles, which could be the key to unravelling better treatment strategies.” 

After a number of concussions, study participant Cindy Vanderveen, has been using the app to manage her brain injury and has noticed a positive change. 

“In the beginning I wasn’t able to drive farther than five minutes at a time,” remembers Cindy. “My care team at St. Joseph’s recommended MyBrainPacer™ App to help me plan and pace my day. Once I began to use the app to plan and track my activities, my symptoms dramatically decreased. I still have bad days and some tasks are harder than others, but through using MyBrainPacer™ App, I am able to do more activities independently and I am 90 per cent back to who I was.”

Currently anyone with an mTBI can enroll as a study participant on the MyBrainPacer™ App by visiting mybrainpacer.ca.  The research team is hoping to enroll approximately five-thousand users.

The creation of the app has been made possible by funding provided by the Cowan Foundation and other community supporters through St. Joseph’s Health Care Foundation.