Fast In-Bed Tracking (FIT) System Lifestyle Intervention is a Clinical Trial of a Bed Scale Device. Overweight Wheelchair Users Will Participate in a Weight Loss Program, Half Will Receive Bed Scales, and Participants Who Receive the Bed Scales Are Expected to Have Increased Weight Loss.

Summary

This project will complete the final design and development steps to commercialize the Fast In-Bed Tracking (FIT) Platform, which is an e-Health and wellness Internet of Things (IoT) monitoring system that can be integrated into a user's bed and provide person-centered, real-world outcomes to support health and wellness. The technical feasibility of FIT was proven over the past several years and has demonstrated the platform can support the treatment of several chronic conditions across different populations, including obesity, congestive heart failure, and pressure injuries. The project goals will be to (1) complete design refinements for FIT and (2) demonstrate the platform's efficacy to support weight loss goals of wheelchair users. Wheelchair users are twice as likely as the general population to be overweight or obese and excess weight not only exacerbates mobility and participation limitations but increases risk for secondary health problems. Evidence reveals that frequent weight monitoring is a key driver for weight management, which puts wheelchair users at a significant disadvantage, because they have no convenient way to measure their body weight. As a recent example, lack of participant's ability to self-weigh was a noted limitation to a weight loss program for wheelchair users, known as the Group Lifestyle Balance weight loss program Adapted for Individuals with Impaired Mobility (GLB-AIM). FIT solves this challenge by passively monitoring a user's weight when they get on and off their bed. The investigators lab and community-based feasibility trials demonstrated that FIT successfully tracks weight for individuals and couples sharing a bed and that users find FIT highly usable. This proposed project will allow the investigators to complete the design refinements participants recommended during our community-based feasibility trial and subsequently examine the efficacy of FIT in supporting the weight-loss goals of community-dwelling wheelchair users through a randomized controlled trial using the GLB-AIM.

Conditions

• Disability Physical
• Wheelchair
• Obesity; Overweight

Interventions

DEVICE

The Fast In-Bed Tracking System (FIT) Weight Scale

It is hypothesized that wheelchair users who are randomized into the FIT Weight Scales group will lose a significantly greater percent of body weight over time (6 months, 12 months) than wheelchair users randomized to the control group.

BEHAVIORAL

Group Lifestyle Balance Adapted for Individuals with Impaired Mobility (GLB-AIM) intervention

The GLB-AIM is a direct adaptation of the Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP) - Group Lifestyle Balance (DPP-GLB) which has successfully yielded an average 6 percent weight loss at 12 months and reduced diabetes risk over 2.8 years by 58 percent, which was 39 percent lower than participants randomized to the metformin group. The GLB-AIM which has been proven feasible and effective in a pilot study and a randomized control trial (RCT) with 67 mobility impaired individuals randomized to the intervention group or a waitlist control group. There were significant between group differences in weight loss at 6 months (-1.7 kg loss vs 0.05 kg gain, p \<0.05) and combined results from both groups after receiving the intervention revealed an average weight loss at 12 months of 3.3 percent of their starting weight. Notably, the average loss was lower than the 5 to 7 percent achieved by diverse participants in the DPP-GLB trials.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD)

  collaborator NIH

• NuRelm, Inc.

  collaborator INDUSTRY

• Craig Hospital

  collaborator OTHER

• Jonathan Pearlman

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Jonathan Pearlman, PhD · University of Pittsburgh

• Katherine Froehlich-Grobe, PhD · Craig Hospital

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

OTHER

Masking

NONE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2026-02-16

Primary Completion

2027-04-30

Completion

2027-09-30

FDA Device

Yes

Countries

• United States

Study Locations