New app aims to improve care for concussion patients
The national collaborative effort, led by Curtin University, brings together clinicians and healthcare providers from around Australia, who partnered with researchers and people with lived experience, to design the AUS-mTBI concussion app.
The AUS-mTBI study seeks to discover why some people experience long-term, sometimes debilitating symptoms when it comes to concussions.
It involves more than 100 concussion experts and their organisations around Australia and is recruiting thousands of people from across the country, to help build a clearer picture of concussion recovery.
A concussion, also known as mild traumatic brain injury, occurs because of a physical injury to the head or body that results in the transmission of force to the brain.
While it is estimated around 180,000 cases occur in Australia annually, the figure is likely to be much higher as most people do not seek medical treatment following an incident.
“Thankfully, concussion symptoms normally resolve within a few days, however, for a small proportion of people, they can continue for weeks, if not months or years, and have long-lasting, negative impacts on individuals, their families, and society.”
“As an emergency nurse, every day I see patients coming to the emergency department with concussion, whether it be from a fall, sports injury, workplace or road injury, or assault,” said chief investigator Kate Curtis, Professor of Emergency and Trauma Nursing at the University of Sydney Susan Wakil School of Nursing and Midwifery.
“Thankfully, concussion symptoms normally resolve within a few days, however, for a small proportion of people, they can continue for weeks, if not months or years, and have long-lasting, negative impacts on individuals, their families, and society.”
“The challenge is that we don’t understand what it is about a person and their injury that predicts whether they will recover normally or if their symptoms will continue. AUS-mTBI is designed to answer that question,” said lead investigator Melinda Fitzgerald, John Curtin Distinguished Professor at Curtin University and Head of Neurotrauma Research at the Perron Institute.
“By confidentially gathering information about the person, their injury, their pre-injury health, and the treatment they have received, our research aims to identify what leads to poorer outcomes in some people who experience a concussion.”
Participants can track and manage their own symptoms over a 12-month period on the HeadCheck app or until their symptoms resolve while gaining access to information and resources to help their recovery to return to normal daily activities such as study, work, sports or recreation.
“We are excited to be a key partner in this national consortium, which is using a novel approach to online health data collection and interpretation to understand the experience of over 5,000 people who have had a recent concussion — participants are reporting their symptoms online via a new specially-designed app and at the same time are receiving support for their recovery,” Professor Curtis said.
“Through the collection of various information, we are establishing an integrated, nationally representative dataset, which will ultimately lead to improvements in care and recovery for people throughout Australia.”
The AUS-mTBI project is a partnership between leading Australian universities, institutes and organisations including the University of Sydney, Curtin University, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, Monash University, Edith Cowan University, The Queensland Brain Institute, Griffith University, Deakin University, the National Imaging Facility, brain injury organisation Synapse Australia Limited, and software company Curve Tomorrow. It is funded by the Australian Government Medical Research Future Fund, Mission for Traumatic Brain Injury.
The app (HeadCheck) and study can be downloaded for free from the App Store or Google Play or accessed via the web-based platform. More information is also available here.