Dr Matthew Brodie

Neuro-rehabilitation to prevent freezing in Parkinson’s Disease

An engaging self-managed neuro-rehabilitation program using eHealth technologies to improve mobility and enhance independence in people with Parkinson’s disease:

Parkinson’s disease is a multi-systems neurodegenerative disease with the severity of clinical symptoms (including postural instability, gait dysfunction an falls). With the population aging, the number of people affected by Parkinson’s disease is expected to double every 25 years presenting an increasing burden on health service and society as a whole. Falls are a common and devastating event in individuals with Parkinson’s disease and often precipitated by excessive gait variability, postural instability and freezing of gait.

Visual, attentional, haptic and auditory stimuli have been used to improve gait dysfunction in people with Parkinson’s disease. The aim of this project is to develop and evaluate a self-managed program using mHealth technology to improve mobility in people suffering from Parkinson’s disease. Dr Matthew Brodie was awarded a Michael & Elizabeth Gilbert Scholarship in Parkinson’s Disease Research.

Cardiovascular health: Exercise management for people with Peripheral Arterial Disease and Intermitt

An engaging self-management program and scalable intervention using mobile technology to enhance healthy ageing and reduce fall risk in people with intermittent claudication: a randomised trial.

Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death and hospital admissions in Australia. Intermittent claudication is an intense cramping leg pain triggered by exercise and a common symptom of Peripheral Arterial Disease. It often causes functional decline, high health service use and loss of independence. Vascular interventions are often used to treat peripheral arterial disease, but are expensive and have limited durability. There is strong evidence that supervised exercise mitigates symptoms and reduces surgery rates. However, compliance and motivation with existing programs is poor (>40% dropout) due to beliefs that exercise-induced pain is harmful.

Supported by the UNSW Medicine Neuroscience, Mental Health and Addiction Theme and SPHERE Clinical Academic Group, we have developed a scalable self-management program for peripheral arterial disease delivered through mobile technology. Our program includes evidence-based standing balance exercises, pain management and interval walking components. It provides individually-tailored tools to empower older people suffering from intermittent claudication to lead more active lives, manage their pain and thereby improving their health outcomes long-term.

Novel methods for fall prediction in older people

Technological advances have enabled less expensive ways to quantify physical fall risk in the homes of older people.

We are exploring whether unobtrusive monitoring of activities of daily living or regular unsupervised directed routine assessments using new sensor-based technologies can predict falls in older adults more accurately.

We are developing and validating a range of mobile apps to assess fall risk factors in research settings and clinical practice; i.e. questionnaires (fear of falling, physical activity, etc), sensorimotor assessments (balance, vision, etc) and cognitive assessments (executive functioning, processing speed, etc.).

We are also working on Smart home IT support for frail elderly people who live alone.