Home-Based Digital Exercise Training Program to Improve Physical Function of Older Sepsis Survivors: Protocol of the HEAL Sepsis Randomized Clinical Trial

Background: While sepsis, an exaggerated response to infection, can affect people of all age groups, it is more prevalent in middle-aged and older adults. Older adults suffer worse short-term and long-term outcomes than younger patients. Older sepsis survivors are commonly discharged to long-term acute care facilities, where they often die within 1 year. Those who return home from the hospital lose the momentum of physical function improvement after early inpatient rehabilitation, and often face exacerbation of comorbidities and decline in physical function. Additionally, patients who are discharged home often live at distant locations and are not able to commute to rehabilitation centers due to their poor health status. Therefore, remotely delivered exercise interventions tailored to this population hold promise to improve physical function safely and effectively after sepsis. However, this type of intervention has yet to be tested in this population.

Objective: This study aims to assess the safety, feasibility, and ease of recruitment and retention of participants for a remotely delivered physical activity intervention for improving physical function in middle-aged and older sepsis survivors.

Methods: The proposed intervention will be delivered through a digital health platform that comprises a patient-facing mobile app and a 12-week physical activity program specifically designed for middle-aged and older sepsis survivors with poor health status who may face challenges participating in traditional out-patient or community-based exercise interventions. This study is ongoing and plans to enroll 40 sepsis survivors aged 55 years and older who will be randomized to either a remotely delivered exercise intervention group or a control group (electronic health diary). Both groups will use a tablet containing the Health in Motion app (Blue Marble Health). The intervention group will receive a clinician-designed personalized avatar-guided home exercise program and reminders while the control group will self-report daily activities using the in-app health diary feature.

Results: This study is the first to use a home-based, remotely monitored 12-week exercise program to improve physical function in sepsis survivors. This study will evaluate the safety, feasibility, and efficacy, providing the necessary knowledge to design and calculate power for future larger trials.

Conclusions: This study will provide important information for planning a future randomized clinical trial to test the efficacy of a remotely delivered exercise intervention in this high-risk population.

Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT05568511; https://clinicaltrials.gov/study/NCT05568511.

International registered report identifier (irrid): DERR1-10.2196/60270.