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What is prehabilitation and how can MySunrise help patients with it?

News
February 3, 2025

What is Prehabilitation and why is it so important? 

Prehabilitation (or prehab) is about preparing patients for what is required in treating their cancer and the impact that this has on them and their families. By promoting healthy behaviours and by following prescribed exercise, nutrition and psychological interventions where appropriate and tailored to a patient's needs, patients can be better prepared for treatment. 

Prehab should be implemented as early in the patient pathway as possible, ideally soon after diagnosis, and well in advance of treatment to empower the patient, achieve maximum benefit, and improve long term health. 

MySunrise  offers access to great resources, services, and signposts patients to the right support through their cancer centres. Prehab follows a holistic approach to improving the overall wellbeing of patients before they start treatment and involves the three pillars around getting active, nutritional support and psychological support as well as other key areas to improve health and wellbeing.  

This in turn improves how patients respond to treatment and saves the NHS money and resources by appropriately directing patients through their treatment pathway and beyond. 

There is a variety of resources being used across Trusts, but no set guidelines in place, although Macmillan are currently working to produce updated guidance. MySunrise, with the support of the Peninsula Cancer Alliance, set out to produce a collection of resources for everyone to have access to in one place via the app. 

How can the MySunrise platform complement a Prehabilitation service? 

One of the challenges for Cancer Centres in delivering prehab services, which can be quite resource heavy, is the flexibility and reliability of this service. Some prehab services have lost funding or found it difficult with workforce challenges to reliably support cancer patients creating inequalities between areas.

There is a clear need for prehab for all cancer patients, and evidence shows it improves outcomes, encourages self-management, saves NHS resources, and adds value for all cancer patients especially if they start as early as possible. 

A key difficulty within healthcare is around accessing the services available, compounded for rural communities by limited public transport options. For Prehabilitation to be equitable and effective, a referral pathway to the local Prehabilitation team would be required where an assessment can take place, creation of a care plan, a recommended personalised intervention set-up including monitoring and evaluation of the patient. 

Delivering these results would rely on these teams being employed within each Trust.  The success of prehab services may depend on the resources available and the reliability and variability of the service in local areas.  Research has shown that each Trust offers a different service including differing priorities to providing access to prehab and how to best deploy support workers or volunteers.  There are cost implications and recruitment freezes which also play a part in this area. Therefore, using the digital app to access resources would be a perfect solution even when potential posts are developed and filled, the app can be used alongside services in place. 

How MySunrise can help trusts with prehab

MySunrise can help to support a prehab service by providing locally curated evidence-based resources for each cancer specific pathway, designed around patient needs and enabling them to get started with their prehab immediately. We aim to provide a more in-depth information and resource section which will build on the existing prehab section and services on offer.

Our research identified resources around Prehabilitation work and resources already available from cancer alliances across the UK.  The 3 pillars followed were exercise, nutrition and psychological support.  There are further excellent resources around other aspects of holistic care and support like stopping smoking, alcohol reduction and some fascinating work on the importance of sleep. 

Within MySunrise we looked at App users, considered some audience personas, developed concepts and measured ourselves against benchmarking of existing health and prehab apps. Furthermore, we looked at users who currently engage with MySunrise to make sure our content and user experience suited these audiences. 

We have tailored our resources for different audiences, such as our videos with exercise routines which allow you to start off slowly and build up or, if exercising is part of your normal routine, there are exercises at higher levels.  The app also offers information about the benefits of increasing exercise, having good nutrition, the importance of looking after your mental health and general wellbeing information. 

There is a drive to ensure prehab is accessible as soon as a patient is diagnosed or even at pre diagnosis stage, but we also want to make sure that prehab is accessible at a variety of different points along the pathway.  Prehab plays an important role in all aspects of care and ongoing delivery of treatment and recovery leading into rehabilitation although the general information and provision is very similar across both prehab and rehab. 

The prehab section can be found within the treatment pathway of the MySunrise app. From the home page, select Treatment Pathway, then scroll down and select step 5 - 'What is prehabilitation?' to get access to our curated content.

How will this tie into local systems? 

MySunrise is currently available to download for free as an iOS or Android smartphone app.  If your hospital Trust has signed up to the app, you will have access to all the bespoke and locally relevant information already included too.  Your cancer teams including CNS, consultant, cancer support workers, cancer support centres can all continue to assist patients to access the information.  Instead of collecting more leaflets, you can access the information straight from your smart phone or the phone of a family member or friend if you don’t have one.  You could even work through the prehab content together, a great way to make the family feel they are doing something to help!   

MySunrise provides access for everyone to just get involved in Prehabilitation to improve their general wellbeing and treatment outcomes. Anyone can access the App, meaning that patients will have access to prehab resources and information as soon as they download the app, even as early as the GP referral into the suspected cancer referral pathway.  There is further development on the horizon to improve the experience and the support offered including individual logins, tracking your own development and even setting personal goals. Our goal, however, remains consistent: empowering patients with the support, help and information they need every step of the way through their treatment by relieving anxiety and giving back some control.