Godfrey A
Newcastle University Business School, Newcastle University Institute for Ageing, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom; Institute of Neuroscience, Newcastle University Institute for Ageing, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom.
Maturitas. 2017 Jun;100:16-26. doi: 10.1016/j.maturitas.2017.03.317. Epub 2017 Mar 27.
Solutions are needed to satisfy care demands of older adults to live independently. Wearable technology (wearables) is one approach that offers a viable means for ubiquitous, sustainable and scalable monitoring of the health of older adults in habitual free-living environments. Gait has been presented as a relevant (bio)marker in ageing and pathological studies, with objective assessment achievable by inertial-based wearables. Commercial wearables have struggled to provide accurate analytics and have been limited by non-clinically oriented gait outcomes. Moreover, some research-grade wearables also fail to provide transparent functionality due to limitations in proprietary software. Innovation within this field is often sporadic, with large heterogeneity of wearable types and algorithms for gait outcomes leading to a lack of pragmatic use. This review provides a summary of the recent literature on gait assessment through the use of wearables, focusing on the need for an algorithm fusion approach to measurement, culminating in the ability to better detect and classify falls. A brief presentation of wearables in one pathological group is presented, identifying appropriate work for researchers in other cohorts to utilise. Suggestions for how this domain needs to progress are also summarised.
需要找到解决方案来满足老年人独立生活的护理需求。可穿戴技术是一种可行的方法，可为在日常自由生活环境中对老年人的健康进行无处不在、可持续且可扩展的监测提供一种手段。在衰老和病理学研究中，步态已被视为一种相关的（生物）标志物，基于惯性的可穿戴设备可对其进行客观评估。商业可穿戴设备一直难以提供准确的分析，并且受到非临床导向的步态结果的限制。此外，由于专有软件的限制，一些研究级可穿戴设备也无法提供透明的功能。该领域的创新往往是零星的，可穿戴设备类型和步态结果算法存在很大异质性，导致缺乏实际应用。本综述总结了近期关于通过使用可穿戴设备进行步态评估的文献，重点关注测量的算法融合方法的必要性，最终实现更好地检测和分类跌倒的能力。简要介绍了一个病理组中的可穿戴设备，为其他队列的研究人员确定了可供利用的合适工作。还总结了该领域需要如何发展的建议。
