IncludeHealth, in collaboration with HealthPartners Neuroscience Education Center in St Paul, Minn, have created Muscle2Mind, a reportedly first-of-its-kind education program focusing on how exercise can impact neurological diseases like dementia or Alzheimer’s.
The goal of the ?Muscle2Mind program is to assess the feasibility of patients with a diagnosis of Mild Cognitive Impairment or early Alzheimer’s disease, and the patients’ care partners to navigate a supervised exercise program, according to a media release from IncludeHealth, a digital health and wellness company based in Cincinnati.
“HealthPartners and IncludeHealth take a like-minded approach to the connection between physical and brain health, as well as the need to leverage data for further insights. We are creating a platform that can help build a vast dataset, which can be used for research projects aimed at improving preventative care and treatment for patients with neurological disorders,” says Ryan Eder, founder of IncludeHealth, in the release.
“By collaborating with HealthPartners researchers and Regions Hospital Rehabilitation—two of the components that make up HealthPartners Neuroscience Center?—our novel equipment and technology will now be utilized for groundbreaking neuroscience research. We anticipate the opportunity to improve the lives of dementia patients and patients with other neurological conditions through exercise-as-medicine.”
The 3-month Muscle2Mind program includes five pairs of participants, consisting of a patient with Mild Cognitive Impairment or early Alzheimer’s disease and their care partner. The pairs will utilize IncludeHealth’s equipment and technology under supervision of an exercise physiologist.
The ability to capture data through IncludeHealth’s platform and assess feasibility of the program will guide the development of research protocols. A future research study goal will be to evaluate measurable outcomes to assess the effectiveness of the exercise program for patients with Alzheimer’s disease, the release explains.
“We are utilizing IncludeHealth’s technology in hopes of giving individuals with cognitive deficits more freedom and independence longer into their future,” states Marny Farrell, director of rehabilitation for Regions Hospital.
“Creating an exercise protocol for this population will allow us to understand the impacts of exercise for patients with cognitive deficits,” adds Amanda Herrmann, Neurorehabilitation Research Fellow at the HealthPartners Neuroscience Center.
[Source(s): IncludeHealth, HealthPartners]
