Melhus simply chooses a film from the film library before getting on the bike. While cycling, he watches films from both familiar and unfamiliar places in his local area.
Melhus is one of the first people in the country to have tried out Motiview for daily rehabilitation at home. The trial is part of the Lindås project, the country’s largest project within healthcare technology.
Balance training
«It’s fantastic to have come so far when I think I had no feeling at all the first day I arrived at the hospital,» Melhus tells us.
Melhus’ greatest challenge is his balance. He was given exercises to help him improve as well as training with a fall prevention group. But when Motiview was installed in his home, it became clear which training method he found most motivating.
«I think it’s fantastic and I don’t get bored. If I only had the cycle, ten minutes would seem an awful long time to exercise. But here I’ve got these films where I can follow the road and the sea while I’m cycling. If they’re places I recognise, it makes it more interesting,» he says.
Before he’s even aware of it, Melhus has cycled 15 minutes while watching a film. He does this twice daily.
"I think it’s fantastic and I don’t get bored." - Ola Melhus, one of the first people in the country to have tried out Motiview for daily rehabilitation at home.
Clear improvement
Just one month after starting, health personnel can see a clear improvement in Melhus’ balance.
«To start with it took him 23 seconds to walk four metres using a walker. When I came to test him again after a month, he didn’t want to use the walker, left it to one side and walked four metres on his own in the same 23 seconds,» physiotherapist Kari-Anne Simonsen tells us.
Motivation for exercise
«We have seen how motivation in relation to exercise can be a bit of a challenge, but now we have tremendous faith in Motiview as a means to increase motivation and help to increase users’ physical capacity, which in turn makes users capable of living at home longer,» says Lindås’ municipal ergotherapist, Hildegunn Baravelli.
«It’s very easy to set up and use and provides great motivation for exercise,» she says.
Baravelli thinks Motiview, alongside healthcare technology and daily rehabilitation, is an important contribution to increasing the quality of local authority service provision to people living at home.
The news item with Ola Melhus was filmed in the winter of 2015. In May, the cycle was passed on to new users but Melhus has continued with his training.
«It was really good to have the cycle at home because I was constantly reminded to exercise. The reminder I got by having it stand there was very useful and it was really good to watch the films,» he says.
«Now I’m practicing walking up and down stairs but it’s a bit scary to do it on my own. I think the cycling really helped me to get started with training,» he concludes.