Revenite

Being an amputee comes with health risks. People who have lost limbs tend to age faster, and are more likely to get health issues like diabetes and heart disease at a young age. But we know that staying active and exercising can slow down this aging process and improve quality of life. 

Prosthetics can greatly improve an amputee’s quality of life. But using a prosthetic for a long time isn’t easy. It requires high levels of cardiovascular fitness, core strength, and flexibility. The rest of the arm or leg (the residual limb) needs to be healthy and the prosthetic itself needs to fit perfectly to reduce discomfort and pain.  

Earlier studies showed that amputee Veterans wanted more support to help them maintain their health and fitness – ideally with ways to connect with other Veterans dealing with the same issues.  

To meet this need, Professor Alison McGregor and her team created Revenite. This was a web application that Veterans could use to monitor their health. As well as logging their exercise routines, users could also use the app to track the health of their residual limb and the comfort of their socket. 

The Scar Free Foundation funded this project to test whether veterans used and enjoyed the app, and find out how it could be improved in the future. 

What did the researchers do? 

A software company developed the app while the researchers reached out to their networks to recruit participants. Unfortunately, too few people signed up to use the application for the study to go ahead as planned.  

Despite the disappointing outcome, the researchers learned valuable lessons about the amputee Veteran community, and how the app could be improved. Many Veterans are already physically active and have a training plan in place – ‘Revenite’ was not advanced enough to compete with existing fitness apps, despite its unique features.  

For those Veterans that weren’t active, the app didn’t meet their needs. They wanted more information on how to look after their residual limbs while staying active.  

The researchers used these insights to create a survey around socket comfort and residual limb issues. Over 300 people took the survey, 180 of which were people with amputations.   

What difference will this research make? 

While the project didn’t go as planned, this research will still make a difference in the future. The lessons learned by the researchers will be used to develop a new tool that better meets the needs of amputee Veterans. This new app will include things like more guidance on exercise and rehabilitation, and advice on how to manage socket comfort and residual limb health.