ErgoLoCo - Digital Occupational therapy (ergotherapy) for long-COVID patients
According to the latest scientific findings, the novel Long COVID syndrome is still difficult to characterize. Over a longer period of time, affected persons are often impaired in their daily life due to symptoms such as concentration problems, brain fog or fatigue. The ErgoLoCo research project wants to develop and test a digital occupational therapy intervention for people with Long COVID. The project also aims to expand health services that contribute to reducing treatment and illness costs and enable comprehensive care.
Project goals
In ErgoLoCo, a digital occupational therapy intervention will be developed and tested. First, current evidence as well as the experiences of professionals who treat patients suffering from concentration problems due to Long COVID will be gathered. This information will be used to develop the occupational therapy intervention. The intervention will include various activities which are designed to improve the ability of the participants to perform their everyday tasks. Furthermore, the feasibility, acceptance and the effectiveness of these interventions will be evaluated and verified.
Study design and methodology
The ErgoLoCo pilot study uses an unblinded, randomized controlled research design to explore two different approaches to implementing a standardized digital occupational therapy program.
The ErgoLoCo Study will include adolescents between 16 and 18 years old and adults between 30 and 50 years old. Both groups will include 80 study participants. The length of the intervention is 12 weeks.
The ErgoLoCo research team will be testing all participants at the begin of the study and following the 12 week program. The goal of the intervention is to reduce brain fog, impaired concentration, fatigue and/or the participants’ self-perceived limitations in performing relevant daily tasks to a higher degree than waiting and healing spontaneously over time. The feasibility, acceptability and ease of use of the occupational therapy interventions will be also evaluated, so that the program can be improved according to participant and professional feedback.
The study has three different arms (live-online therapy, video-based therapy or waiting). In the first arm, one group receives the therapy program in form of a teletherapeutic online session (“live online therapy”). The participants (20 adolescents and 20 adults) are guided by certified occupational therapists. In the second arm of the study, the same components of the ErgoLoCo therapy program will be made available to a different group of participants (20 adolescents and 20 adults) as a video program for self-application without direct contact to occupational therapists. In the third arm of the study, the participants (40 adolescents and 40 adults) will wait to receive online therapy at a later point in time, after the pilot study materials have been evaluated and improved.
The ErgoLoCo digital therapy programs will be available to study participants via the DEFEAT Corona online platform (https://www.defeat-corona.de/) hosted by the Hannover Medical School.
Scientific questions of the study
- Does digital occupational therapy lead to a reduction of activity limitations in daily living caused by COVID-19-related cognitive impairment?
- What are the experiences of the occupational therapists who perform the live-online ErgoLoCo therapy treatment?
- What are the experiences of participants in a digital occupational therapy intervention in form of either live-online therapy or video-based therapy?
- Which components of the ErgoLoCo occupational therapy intervention are effective/not effective?
- Which factors help and which factors hinder the success of the ErgoLoCo occupational therapy intervention and how can the therapy intervention be improved?
Project partner
Project partner
Hannover Medical School Clinic for Rheumatology and Immunology
- PD Dr. med. Alexandra Dopfer-Jablonka
- Prof. Dr. med. Sandra Steffens
- Prof. Dr. med. Georg Behrens
- PD Dr. med. Christine Happle, PhD
- Andrea Stoelting
- Marie Mikuteit
Ostfalia University of Applied Sciences Braunschweig/ Wolfenbüttel
- Prof. Dr. Frank Klawonn
- Sandra Klawitter
University Medical Center Göttingen Institute for General Practice
- Dr. med. Frank Müller
- Christina Müllenmeister, M.Sc. OT
- Iman El-Sayed, M.A.
- Dominik Schröder, MPH
University of Applied Sciences for Economics and Management gGmbh
- Prof. Dr. Christoph Berg
Contact
contact information
- telephone: +49 551 3968074
- fax: +49 551 3929530
- e-mail address: christina.muellenmeister(at)med.uni-goettingen.de