Darcy Ummels

Patients’ experiences with commercially available activity trackers embedded in physiotherapy treatment | 59 3 with a chronic disease after using activity trackers and can guide the use in further research and practice. Limitations and strengths This study has certain strengths and limitations. The activity trackers used were the most up ‐ to ‐ date at the time of the study. However, some manufacturers stopped producing these specific kinds of tracker or stopped producing activity trackers entirely, while several new activity tracker brands and updated versions have been released with new functions. To the authors ’ knowledge, though, none of these activity trackers are designed for people with a chronic disease or even the healthcare sector in general. However, the concepts of the framework are general and still applicable to updated versions and new brands. The length of time the participants used the activity tracker varied. Every participant used the activity tracker for at least one week, and they were free to use the activity tracker for a longer period of time if they desired. This might have influenced their experience since they would become more familiar with the tracker. Some participants used more than one activity tracker, which may also have biased their experience since they might have compared the activity trackers during the interview. This might also have intensified the experiences, resulting in enriched data in this study. One strength of this study is the use of the Framework Method, which has been used in research for over 25 years. 41 Some of its strong points are: data can be easily summarized, the structure is visually easy to interpret, it can be used with inductive and deductive analysis, the systematic procedure is easy to follow and has a clear audit trail. 41 Another strength of this study is the implementation of the activity tracker in physiotherapy treatment. The participants were free to use the activity tracker any way they liked, but almost none used it in their physiotherapy treatment. One explanation was that they valued the treatment for their physical complaints more than discussing their physical activity data. The participating physiotherapists received two training sessions and no further instructions about the use of the activity tracker in their daily practice. This information was probably too limited and more training including show cases is needed. It might be possible that physiotherapists therefore had too limited knowledge how to imbed the use of activity trackers in their treatment. The participants may also have not seen the added value of an activity tracker during their therapy, due to lack of guidance from their physiotherapist. If embedded correctly, activity trackers can potentially contribute in a positive way to the physical behavior of a patient.