Innovative system for measurement of walking ability in everyday clinical applications

Purpose and goal

A robust, wearable system to assess and monitor human movement during gait has been further developed to allow for clinical applicability. User friendly hardware and software were implemented to allow for use by non-specialist staff during daily routine, and clinical verification has been carried out on 6 patients with orthopedic or neurological gait disturbances. A new reference material including 30 healthy persons has been collected, and a second reference material based on 100 healthy elderly has been analyzed and included in the reference database.

Expected results and effects

An important expected effect was to create a system that may be used by non-specialist staff during daily routine. Through interviews and interaction design, our system has been further improved from a research prototype to a product that may easily be used by the end customer. The system was primarily customized towards elderly patients since the emphasis of the reference group is elderly persons. The measurements are however generalizable to any age or patient group of interest. Evaluated has been performed on patients with orthopedic as well as neurological gait deficits.

Planned approach and implementation

A user study including interviews with experienced as well as potentially new end users was performed. This revealed weakness needed to be targeted to gain a robust system applicable in daily clinic. Technical verification was performed in an optical movement analysis laboratory and two reference materials, one for each module of the system, were compiled. The time and project plan were successfully followed, but in the oldest age group (persons 70-80 of age) the recruitment of men was particularly difficult since many in this age interval suffered from some kind of movement disorder.