An integrated virtual group training system for COPD patients at home

Abstract

Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) patients often experience a downward spiral of fear for breathlessness, inactivity and social isolation which leads to a bad physical condition. Motivation to keep patients compliant to their training scheme is a key factor in home-based exercise training. This paper presents the Integrated Training System for COPD patients; a home based virtual group exercise system to facilitate improvement of the exercise capacity safely at home using a virtual group environment. The four components of the system are the Home Trainer, the Virtual Exercise Environment, the Web Portal and the Controller. These components are implemented in a prototype, in which as much as possible existing components are used. An in-training evaluation was performed to evaluate the subsystems used during a training exercise. All subsystems are working correctly during the evaluation. In this paper the focus for the Integrated Training System is on COPD patients, but the system might be used for other groups such as Chronic Heart Failure patients or elderly people in general.