Clinician perceptions of a prototype wearable exercise biofeedback system for orthopaedic rehabilitation: a qualitative exploration

Abstract

ObjectivesThis study explores the opinions of orthopaedic healthcare professionals regarding the opportunities and challenges of using wearable technology in rehabilitation. It continues to assess the perceived impact of an exemplar exercise biofeedback system that incorporates wearable sensing, involving the clinician in the user-centred design process, a valuable step in ensuring ease of implementation, sustained engagement and clinical relevance.DesignThis is a qualitative study consisting of one-to-one semi-structured interviews, including a demonstration of a prototype wearable exercise biofeedback system. Interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed, with thematic analysis conducted of all transcripts.SettingThe study was conducted in the orthopaedic department of an acute private hospital.ParticipantsTen clinicians from a multidisciplinary team of healthcare professionals involved in the orthopaedic rehabilitation pathway participated in the study.ResultsParticipants reported that there is currently a challenge in gathering timely and objective data for the monitoring of patients in orthopaedic rehabilitation. While there are challenges in ensuring reliability and engagement of biofeedback systems, clinicians perceive significant value in the use of wearable biofeedback systems such as the exemplar demonstrated for use following total knee replacement.ConclusionsClinicians see an opportunity for wearable technology to continuously track data in real-time, and feel that feedback provided to users regarding exercise technique and adherence can further support the patient at home, although there are clear design and implementation challenges relating to ensuring technical accuracy and tailoring rehabilitation to the individual. There was perceived value in the prototype system demonstrated to participants which supports the ongoing development of such exercise biofeedback platforms.

A Systematic Review on the Use of Wearable Body Sensors for Health Monitoring: A Qualitative Synthesis

“…Physical activity recognition 17 --10 7 -- [8] Physical activity recognition 14 ------ [9] Physical activity recognition 4 - For completeness, the remaining 13 articles not listed in Table 2 and 3 were distributed over eight article categories: Asthma/COPD [63], Cardiovascular diseases [64], Gait and fall [65][66][67], Neurological diseases [68], Physical activity recognition [69], Rehabilitation [70], Stress and sleep [71], and Additional [72][73][74][75]. Six articles report on systems where studies are upcoming [63,64,[72][73][74][75].…”

“…Three articles report on studies using datasets [66,67,69]. Two articles report on qualitative studies of observational and/or interview nature [68,70]. The continuation of the qualitative study [70] is reported upon in [48].…”

“…Two articles report on qualitative studies of observational and/or interview nature [68,70]. The continuation of the qualitative study [70] is reported upon in [48]. The evaluation in [65] is not clearly presented and the system developed in [71] uses wearable body sensors only to collect ground truth data for a contactless sleep monitoring system.…”

Smartphone App with an Accelerometer Enhances Patients’ Physical Activity Following Elective Orthopedic Surgery: A Pilot Study

“…Besides objective activity monitoring, Hospital Fit also provides patients insight into their recovery progress and offers physiotherapists the option of creating a patient-specific exercise program supported by videos. Recently, an increasing number of other mHealth tools have been investigated within the orthopedic rehabilitation pathway [28][29][30][63][64][65][66][67][68][69]. These tools are predominantly prescribed in support of outpatient physiotherapy.…”

Design of a Low-Cost, Wearable Device for Kinematic Analysis in Physical Therapy Settings

“…Both patients and physical therapists agree that goal setting can be effective at improving exercise adherence. 23,24 Goal setting in PT settings is usually thought of as achieving a certain number of repetitions or a level of resistance. However, biomechanical analysis provides an additional dimension of goal setting: exercise quality.…”