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Researchers at University of Tsukuba have developed "SUKUBARA®," a home training system, comprising a complex exercise program. This program can be easily and quickly performed by watching instructional videos and using a remote monitoring system. The effectiveness of the proposed system was evaluated with elderly participants, demonstrating its potential to increase muscle mass and leg strength.

Tsukuba, Japan—Japan is currently facing a hyper-aged society, and the number of older adults who become frail (a state of physical and mental deterioration due to aging) is increasing. Frailty has various effects, including a higher probability of mobility loss or becoming bedridden in later life and increased costs related to medical care and long-term care.

Although physical exercise is crucial in preventing frailty, the development of an easy-to-use training system for older adults that can be used at home is lacking. To address this issue, this research group devised a new training system called "SUKUBARA®" with a simple exercise program and a monitoring function to manage its remote implementation. SUKUBARA® combines resistance and balance exercises into an exercise program that can be completed quickly and is provided through a video channel. This is combined with a monitoring system that allows the video channel administrator to track and monitor the duration each participant spends on exercise videos and record it as the actual time they spent performing exercises.

The efficacy of SUKUBARA® was assessed among healthy elderly residents of Tsukuba City and found that using the proposed system may increase muscle mass and leg strength. The development and dissemination of such a system is expected to create a systematic frailty prevention system for older people.

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This study was supported by Japanese orthopedic association project grant (Grant Number 2021‑3).　

Original Paper

Title of original paper:

Effectiveness of a Remote Monitoring-Based Home Training System for Preventing Frailty in Older Adults in Japan: A Preliminary Randomized Controlled Trial

Journal:

Geriatrics

DOI:

10.3390/geriatrics9010020

Correspondence

Associate Professor KODA Masao
Institute of Medicine, University of Tsukuba

Assistant Professor SUZUKI Yasuhiro
Institute of Systems and Information Engineering, University of Tsukuba

Related Link

Institute of Medicine