Computer-Aided Prevention System

Summary

Stroke is one of the most frequent and life-threatening diseases in Europe. About four stroke events occur per day in Luxembourg alone, and about 30% of these patients are affected by recurrent stroke within the following five years. Thus, new methods of primary and secondary prevention are needed to better control lifestyle-related risk factors.

The development and maintenance of a healthy lifestyle (smoking cessation, healthy nutrition, moderate physical exercises etc.) is a major objective concerning the primary and secondary prevention of cerebro- and cardiovascular diseases. CAPSYS is a computer-based lifestyle coaching system developed by researchers from the Public Research Centre (CRP) Henri Tudor in Luxembourg in collaboration with neurologists from the Centre Hospitalier de Luxembourg (CHL), which aims at supporting patients in performing appropriate behavior changes in order to minimize their individual risk factors. Patients can access CAPSYS by dialing a local-rate telephone number and answer to a set of previously known questions concerning their current nutrition, physical activity, blood pressure, smoking etc. In an interactive voice response approach, questions are issued by the system in natural language using text-to-speech, and the patient can provide the required values using the phone keypad. Based on the gathered values for each patient, the system automatically generates personalized verbal feedback at runtime and presents it to the patient during the phone dialog. Depending on the individual development of the patient's risk factors, the system feedback can contain advice for improvement, praise for healthy behavior and motivation to pursue a certain goal.

The user acceptance and effectiveness of the CAPSYS system is evaluated in a six-month randomized controlled study with participants recruited at CHL's neurology department.

Conditions

• Cerebrovascular Diseases
• Stroke
• Cardiovascular Diseases
• CVD Risk Factors

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Standard care

Participants receive only the usual care including blood analyses, blood pressure controls and individual advice on healthy lifestyle during the outpatient treatment given by the neurologist, by the general practitioner and by other physicians.

BEHAVIORAL

CAPSYS

In addition to the usual care, patients are asked to call the CAPSYS system twice a week.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Centre Hospitalier du Luxembourg

  collaborator OTHER

• Lübomira Spassova

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Lübomira Spassova, Dr.-Ing. · Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology

• Debora Vittore · Centre Hospitalier de Luxembourg (CHL)

• Dirk W Droste, Prof. Dr. · Centre Hospitalier de Luxembourg (CHL)

• Norbert Rösch, Prof. Dr. · University of Applied Sciences Kaiserslautern

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

PREVENTION

Masking

NONE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

20 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2013-01-31

Primary Completion

2014-08-31

Completion

2014-08-31