Is there a relationship between technology-based measures of exercise adherence and clinical outcomes for people with pain?

Although exercise is a recommended treatment for musculoskeletal pain, we are still not sure what the mechanisms are. It is clear that not everyone responds to this treatment, and among people who do benefit from exercise, responses are variable. We need to know whether people who do more exercise (more volume or higher intensity) have greater benefits. There are also likely to be other factors that influence exercise adherence (e.g. how confident someone is to undertake exercise) and other factors that influence exercise outcomes independent of exercise adherence (e.g. age or severity of the condition). What we now need to do is test which factors may influence exercise outcomes and whether they do this via exercise adherence or other pathways. First, we need to develop and test a technology-based measure of how much exercise someone does because self report measures of exercise adherence are not very accurate. This is an exciting program of research that will involve the following steps: 1) develop and test the accuracy of sensor based measure of exercise adherence; 2) develop a greater understanding of how to engage clinicians and patients in cohort studies and co-design a protocol; 3) test the factors that influence exercise outcomes for people with musculoskeletal pain.