David Moulaee Conradsson

David Moulaee Conradsson

Senior Lecturer | Docent

My research focuses on digital healthcare and rehabilitation, with an emphasis on developing and evaluating digital interventions to promote more equitable health.

Telephone: +46852486614
Visiting address: Alfred Nobels allé 23, 14183 Huddinge
Postal address: H1 Neurobiologi, vårdvetenskap och samhälle, H1 Fysioterapi Moulaee-Conradsson, 171 77 Stockholm
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About me

  • I am a registered physiotherapist and Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) at the Division of Physiotherapy, Karolinska Institutet. My research focuses on rehabilitation and health promotion, with a particular interest in physical activity and secondary prevention for people living with neurological diseases. I conduct experimental and interventional research aimed at improving health, physical function and participation in everyday life, with a particular focus on digital health and digitally supported care.

    I have a background in clinical physiotherapy, rehabilitation and health promotion research. I received my PhD from Karolinska Institutet 2016, where I studied balance control in people with Parkinson’s disease, followed by postdoctoral training at McGill University in Canada.

    I lead the research group REACH – Digital Treatment and Prevention, which develops and evaluates digital approaches to rehabilitation, physical activity and prevention in collaboration with researchers, clinical professionals and people with lived experience.

    I am also the manager the uMOVE core facility at Karolinska Institutet, supporting research on movement and physical activity, and serve as Chair of the Network for Movement and Physical Function.

Research

  • My research focuses on rehabilitation, health promotion and digital secondary prevention across different patient populations and stages of recovery. A central theme is how individually tailored interventions and digital health solutions can support physical activity, self-management and long-term health. I work across a range of populations, including people recovering from stroke and transient ischemic attack (TIA), people living with Parkinson’s disease and spinal cord injury, and children recovering from cancer.

    A particular focus is the development and evaluation of digital approaches to rehabilitation and secondary prevention. This includes co-producing accessible and tailored digital interventions with patients, caregivers and healthcare professionals, and evaluating their feasibility, effectiveness, implementation and longer-term impact in clinical practice. My research combines experimental and interventional studies with patient-reported outcomes, physical activity assessment and registry-based research.

    I also contribute to international and global health research examining rehabilitation and health outcomes across different healthcare settings. In collaboration with Professor Conran Joseph (Stellenbosch University), I am involved in research comparing rehabilitation and health systems for people with stroke and spinal cord injury in Sweden and South Africa, with the aim of contributing to improved and more equitable rehabilitation services.

Teaching

  • I have a strong interest in education and actively engage in teaching, supervision, and course development at the bachelor’s, master’s, and PhD levels. My teaching expertise includes digital physiotherapy, physical activity assessment, and interventions to promote physical activity among people with neurological diseases or injuries.

    I am course leader for the advanced-level course Remote Physiotherapy – A Physiotherapeutic Perspective (7.5 credits), which I have developed to strengthen physiotherapists’ knowledge, skills, and readiness to deliver person-centred care and rehabilitation remotely using digital technologies. More broadly, my educational work focuses on preparing health professionals to integrate digital approaches into clinical practice, including assessment, treatment, communication, and follow-up.

    I also teach clinical and objective methods for assessing movement and physical activity, and contribute to course coordination, curriculum development, lectures, seminars, examination, and internationalisation of education.

Selected publications

Articles

All other publications

Selected grants

  • Swedish Research Council
    1 January 2024 - 31 December 2024
  • Swedish Research Council
    1 January 2023 - 31 December 2026
    The overarching purpose is to improve secondary stroke prevention post stroke or transient ischemic attack (TIA) by increasing access to physical activity through telerehabilitation. This will be accomplished by building on a national collaboration within secondary stroke prevention and by testing a new telerehabilitation program (ENAbLE) developed in Australia.The ENAbLE program seeks to strengthen physical functioning and self-efficacy for exercise through home-based physical exercise and to equip the person with knowledge and confidence to sustain physical activity through behavior change techniques. The program will be accessible via a recent developed mobile application which will be used to reinforce autonomy and patient-therapist partnership.We will first evaluate if a digital version of the ENAbLE program could be delivered as intended through a pilot randomized controlled trial to determine the feasibility, end-users experiences and preliminary effects in people post stroke/TIA living in urban and rural regions of Sweden. We will thereafter perform a full-scale randomized controlled trial to assess the effectiveness of the ENAbLE program on cardiovascular health, physical activity, function, well-being and its cost-effectiveness across Sweden.This project will address the unmet need of providing accessible and sustainable support for physical activity to people post stroke or TIA to decrease the risk of stroke recurrence through adherence to physical activity.
  • Swedish Research Council for Health Working Life and Welfare
    1 January 2022 - 31 December 2026
    Support for physical activity is necessary to sustain health after stroke and transient ischemic attack (TIA). Still, rehabilitation services are not available to many of those who potentially would benefit due to barriers related to accessibility. While telerehabilitation is a promising strategy to support physical activity, there is a gap of knowledge regarding the implementation of technology that meet the needs of people post stroke or TIA in order to foster adherence and engagement in physical activity.Purpose is to improve health and wellbeing after stroke or TIA by increasing the access to physical activity through telerehabilitation. This will be accomplished by building on a national collaboration within secondary stroke prevention and through testing of an existing telerehabilitation program (ENAbLE) developed in Australia.The ENAbLE program seeks to strengthen physical functioning and self-efficacy for exercise through home-based physical exercise and to equip the person with knowledge and confidence to sustain physical activity through behavior change techniques. The program will be accessible via a recent developed mobile application which will be used to reinforce autonomy and patient-therapist partnership.We will first evaluate if the ENAbLE program can be delivered as intended through a pilot RCT to determine the feasibility, processes, end-users experiences and preliminary effects of the program in urban and rural regions of Sweden. We will thereafter initiate a full-scale RCT to investigate the effects of the ENAbLE program on risk factors for recurrent stroke, well-being and its cost-effectiveness across Sweden.The project will draw on socio-technical theory, depicting technologies as part of a dynamic system in order to explore its potential use in rehabilitation. The ENAbLE program offers a sustainable strategy to support exercise and physical activity which could benefit a large group of people with stroke and TIA regardless of where they live.

Grants

  • Swedish Heart-Lung Foundation
    1 January 2026 - 31 December 2028
    Background: The prevalence of stroke-related disability is expected to rise globally, significantly impacting families, healthcare systems, and economies. Although strong evidence supports the role of physical activity (PA) in improving health and preventing complications after stroke or transient ischemic attack (TIA), access to support for PA remains limited. When available, such support is often short-term and lacks the long-term personalization needed to sustain behavior change. Objective: This project investigates whether a personalized digital intervention (REACH) can enhance PA and health while reducing secondary complications in individuals post stroke or TIA. The specific objectives are to determine whether the REACH intervention: - Improves PA, physical functioning, well-being, and quality of life immediately after the intervention. - Reduces post-stroke complications and healthcare utilization for up to 5 years post-baseline. - Is cost-effective compared to standard care. We hypothesize that the REACH intervention will improve PA, functioning, well-being, and quality of life
    reduce the incidence of recurrent stroke, comorbidities, mortality, and healthcare utilization
    and be cost-effective, supporting large-scale implementation. Work Plan: In a multicenter Sequential Multiple Assignment Randomized Trial, 371 individuals post-stroke/TIA no longer receiving rehabilitation and with low PA will be randomized to one of two groups: - REACH, a 12-month mHealth intervention incorporating adaptive, personalized treatment trajectories, with physiotherapist-led support for exercise and self-management of PA. - Standard care, without active intervention. Recruitment and trial implementation will be conducted through an established clinical network across 5 Swedish regions. The primary outcome is steps per day, assessed via accelerometry immediately post-intervention. Stroke recurrence, comorbidity, mortality, and healthcare utilization will be tracked for up to 5 years using registry data. Cost-effectiveness will be evaluated through both within-trial and model-based economic analyses. Significance: If REACH improves PA and reduces the risk of secondary complications, it would represent a breakthrough in secondary stroke prevention, offering profound benefits for individuals, healthcare systems, and society. The cost-effectiveness analysis, combined with a scalable digital intervention model, will support national implementation.
  • Swedish Research Council
    1 January 2025 - 31 December 2026
  • Swedish Research Council
    1 January 2023 - 31 December 2026
    Life means combining motor-cognitive skills, e.g., walking, talking and navigating. Aging or neurological diseases, e.g., Parkinson’s disease (PD) compromises these skills needed for an independent life. It is uncertain which brain alterations lead to these difficulties and how to target these heterogenous motor-cognitive difficulties. Current treatments apply a "one-size-fits-all" approach, which needs to evolve towards personalized rehabilitation, reaching beyond a simple adaption to disease severity.Our multimodal project combines physiotherapy, neurology, psychology and neuroimaging to characterize motor-cognitive skills during complex walking, identify underlying brain alterations and subtype PD to inform a novel exercise approach for people with PD. This 5 years proposal has 4 stages: 1) Exploring brain alterations and links to the motor-cognitive skills in healthy and PD 2) PD subtyping using neuroimaging, motor, cognitive and clinical data 3) Characterization of exercise responsiveness in PD and 4) Development and testing of a personalized motor-cognitive exercise program. We combine novel techniques for data collection with in-depth analysis of existing data (EXPANd trial). The results will have an immediate application and clinical relevance for personalized rehabilitation in older and PD. There is no cure for PD yet, thus positive findings would revolutionize treatment, giving new hope to patients for a life with improved health, independence and higher quality.
  • VINNOVA
    14 June 2021 - 30 April 2023
  • Fonds de Recherche du Québec - Santé
    1 April 2018 - 31 March 2019
  • Canadian Institutes of Health Research
    1 April 2017 - 31 March 2018
  • Fonds de Recherche du Québec - Santé
    1 April 2016 - 31 March 2018

Employments

  • Senior Lecturer, Physiotherapy, Department of Neurobiology, Care Sciences and Society, Karolinska Institutet, 2024-
  • Assistant Professor, Department of Neurobiology, Care Sciences and Society, Karolinska Institutet, 2019-2024
  • Lecturer, Department of Neurobiology, Care Sciences and Society, Karolinska Institutet, 2016-2024

Degrees and Education

  • Docent, Karolinska Institutet, 2021
  • Degree Of Doctor Of Philosophy, Department of Neurobiology, Care Sciences and Society, Karolinska Institutet, 2016
  • Degree Of Master Of Medical Science 60 Credits, Karolinska Institutet, 2014
  • Degree Of Bachelor Of Science In Physiotherapy, Karolinska Institutet, 2008

Supervision

  • Supervision to doctoral degree

    • Lisa Sandberg, Physical activity in people with Parkinson’s disease –risk factors, exercise effects and connections to brain function, 2023-
    • Alexander Kvist, Evaluating complex walking in aging and neurological disease: from motor behavior to brain activity, 2021-

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