Sensor-Based Daily Physical Activity: Towards Prediction of the Level of Concern about Falling in Peripheral Neuropathy

Abstract

Concern about falling is prevalent and increases the risk of falling in people with peripheral neuropathy (PN). However, the assessment of concern about falling relies on self-report surveys, and thus continuous monitoring has not been possible. We investigated the influence of concern about falling on sensor-based daily physical activity among people with PN. Forty-nine people with PN and various levels of concern about falling participated in this study. Physical activity outcomes were measured over a period of 48 hours using a validated chest-worn sensor. The level of concern about falling was assessed using the falls efficacy scale-international (FES-I). The low concern group spent approximately 80 min more in walking and approximately 100 min less in sitting/lying compared to the high concern group. In addition, the low concern group had approximately 50% more walking bouts and step counts compared to the high concern group. Across all participants, the duration of walking bouts and total step counts was significantly correlated with FES-I scores. The duration of walking bouts and total step counts may serve as eHealth targets and strategies for fall risk assessment among people with PN.

Pilot Site Deployment of an IoT Solution for Older Adults’ Early Behavior Change Detection

“…However, systems proposed in these works are offering solutions for providing real-time and punctual measures and inferred activities without special interest on the evolution overtime and end-users' behavior change. Some other works have investigated changes and anomalies for specific parameters and activities: The work in [15] was interested in studying and investigating the concern about falling for people with peripheral neuropathy (PN). Another work [16] developed a wearable device for monitoring people suffering from muscle disorder.…”

Wearable Health Technology to Quantify the Functional Impact of Peripheral Neuropathy on Mobility in Parkinson’s Disease: A Systematic Review

“…Gait speed initiation, number of steps, and total distance required to reach steady-state walking were studied in four papers [ 34 , 35 , 37 , 38 ]. Duration (%) and number of walking bouts were extracted in one study [ 18 ].…”

“…Mobility assessment with wearable health technologies are widely investigated in a variety of illnesses, particularly in PD, and allows high sensitivity, accuracy, and reproducibility [ 16 ]. However, these methodologies are scarcely studied and have yet to be explored in PNP [ 17 ], although a small number of previous works using wearable sensors have successfully demonstrated motor and physical activity characteristics in PNP compared to controls [ 18 , 19 ]. Since the presence of PNP has only recently been considered related to PD, we were interested in understanding whether PNP-PD patients showed specific motor deficits, which can be measured with the use of wearable health technology.…”

Toward Using Wearables to Remotely Monitor Cognitive Frailty in Community-Living Older Adults: An Observational Study

“…The advantage of the pendant sensor form is that it can be worn unobtrusively as a necklace, which may improve its wearability over long periods of time. This is an important requirement for longitudinal and remote monitoring applications [44,68]. On the other hand, a pendant or chest-worn sensor form may have limited accuracy and/or may provide limited information about activities of daily living and sleep parameters of interest.…”