bWell is a tool specially designed to provide information on arm and shoulder exercises for people with breast cancer. This free app is suitable for people who had breast cancer surgery (without reconstruction), axillary lymph node sampling or clearance and radiotherapy.
bWell comes with a 3-stage exercise program to support patients in the recovery after surgery and radiotherapy and help them to restore arm and shoulder movement and mobility. The tool helps patients to keep on schedule with calendar alerts and includes instructional videos that show how to perform each exercise. bWell tracks completed daily exercise sessions and overall progress in real time. Other features include written instructions, reminders and logs for the post-operative exercises, educational content and links to breast cancer services.
All materials in bWell are evidence-based and developed by researchers from Sussex Health Outcomes Research and Education in Cancer (SHORE-C) along with specialists in physiotherapy, media technology and breast cancer care. The content is informed by breast cancer survivors and is written to be easy for patients to understand and formatted to the mobile platform. A scientific paper has been published. You can download it here https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11764-017-0630-3
Please read through the information in bWell before starting the exercises and remember that this tool should not replace any medical advice and information provided by healthcare professionals.
We would like to hear about your experiences using the app. We have developed a short survey which can be accessed here http://shore-c.sussex.ac.uk/bwell-long.html