Is the timed-up and go test feasible in mobile devices? A systematic review

The number of older adults is increasing worldwide, and it is expected that by 2050 over 2 billion individuals will be more than 60 years old. Older adults are exposed to numerous pathological problems such as Parkinson’s disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, post-stroke, and orthopedic disturbances. Several physiotherapy methods that involve measurement of movements, such as the Timed-Up and Go test, can be done to support efficient and effective evaluation of pathological symptoms and promotion of health and well-being. In this systematic review, the authors aim to determine how the inertial sensors embedded in mobile devices are employed for the measurement of the different parameters involved in the Timed-Up and Go test. The main contribution of this paper consists of the identification of the different studies that utilize the sensors available in mobile devices for the measurement of the results of the Timed-Up and Go test. The results show that mobile devices embedded motion sensors can be used for these types of studies and the most commonly used sensors are the magnetometer, accelerometer, and gyroscope available in off-the-shelf smartphones. The features analyzed in this paper are categorized as quantitative, quantitative + statistic, dynamic balance, gait properties, state transitions, and raw statistics. These features utilize the accelerometer and gyroscope sensors and facilitate recognition of daily activities, accidents such as falling, some diseases, as well as the measurement of the subject's performance during the test execution.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The Center for Nursing Research and Quality Outcomes

10 Year Anniversary Book of Research, Magnet Conference and Quality Improvement Project Abstracts, 2010-2020: Cover and Table of Contents. Index published separately.https://knowledgeconnection.mainehealth.org/annualreports/1009/thumbnail.jp

Can pervasive sensing address current challenges in global healthcare?

Important challenges facing global healthcare include the increase in the number of people affected by escalating healthcare costs, chronic and infectious diseases, the need for better and more affordable elderly care and expanding urbanisation combined with air and water pollution. Recent advances in pervasive sensing technologies have led to miniaturised sensor networks that can be worn or integrated within the living environment without affecting a person's daily patterns. These sensors promise to change healthcare from snapshot measurements of physiological parameters to continuous monitoring enabling clinicians to provide guidance on a daily basis. This article surveys several of the solutions provided by these sensor platforms from elderly care to neonatal monitoring and environmental mapping. Some of the opportunities available and the challenges facing the adoption of such technologies in large-scale epidemiological studies are also discussed

Can smartwatches replace smartphones for posture tracking?

This paper introduces a human posture tracking platform to identify the human postures of sitting, standing or lying down, based on a smartwatch. This work develops such a system as a proof-of-concept study to investigate a smartwatch's ability to be used in future remote health monitoring systems and applications. This work validates the smartwatches' ability to track the posture of users accurately in a laboratory setting while reducing the sampling rate to potentially improve battery life, the first steps in verifying that such a system would work in future clinical settings. The algorithm developed classifies the transitions between three posture states of sitting, standing and lying down, by identifying these transition movements, as well as other movements that might be mistaken for these transitions. The system is trained and developed on a Samsung Galaxy Gear smartwatch, and the algorithm was validated through a leave-one-subject-out cross-validation of 20 subjects. The system can identify the appropriate transitions at only 10 Hz with an F-score of 0.930, indicating its ability to effectively replace smart phones, if needed

Special Issue “Body Sensors Networks for E-Health Applications”

Body Sensor Networks (BSN) have emerged as a particularization of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) in the context of body monitoring environments, closely linked to healthcare applications. These networks are made up of smart biomedical sensors that allow the monitoring of physiological parameters and serve as the basis for e-Health applications. This Special Issue collects some of the latest developments in the field of BSN related to new developments in biomedical sensor technologies, the design and experimental characterization of on-body/in-body antennas and new communication protocols for BSN, including some review studies

Technology Innovation Enabling Falls Risk Assessment in a Community Setting

Approximately one in three people over the age of 65 will fall each year, resulting in significant financial, physical, and emotional cost on the individual, their family, and society. Currently, falls are managed using on-body sensors and alarm pendants to notify others when a falls event occurs. However these technologies do not prevent a fall from occurring. There is now a growing focus on falls risk assessment and preventative interventions. Falls risk is currently assessed in a clinical setting by expert physiotherapists, geriatricians, or occupational therapists following the occurrence of an injurious fall. As the population ages, this reactive model of care will become increasingly unsatisfactory, and a proactive community-based prevention strategy will be required. Recent advances in technology can support this new model of care by enabling community-based practitioners to perform tests that previously required expensive technology or expert interpretation. Gait and balance impairment is one of the most common risk factors for falls. This paper reviews the current technical and non-technical gait and balance assessments, discusses how low-cost technology can be applied to objectively administer and interpret these tests in the community, and reports on recent research where body-worn sensors have been utilized. It also discusses the barriers to adoption in the community and proposes ethnographic research as a method to investigate solutions to these barriers