Preclinical research; Rehabilitation; Translational research
Functional decline in older adults can lead to an increased need of assistance or even moving to a nursing home. Utilising home automation, power and wearable sensors, our system continuously keeps track of the functional status of older adults through monitoring their daily life and allows health care professionals to create individualised rehabilitation programmes based on the changes in the older adult’s functional capacity and performance in daily life. The system uses the taxonomy of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) by the World Health Organization (WHO). It links sensor data to five ICF items from three ICF categories and measures their change over time. We collected data from 20 (pre-)frail older adults (aged $$\ge$$75 years) during a 10-month observational randomised pilot intervention study. The system successfully passed the first pre-clinical validation step on the real-world data of the OTAGO study. Furthermore, an initial test with a medical professional showed that the system is intuitive and can be used to design personalised rehabilitation measures. Since this research is in an early stage further clinical studies are needed to fully validate the system.
von Svenja Tonn ; Andrey Korshunov ; Denise Obrecht-Sturm ; Martin Sill ; Michael Spohn ; Katja von Hoff ; Till Milde ; Torsten Pietsch ; Tobias Goschzik ; Brigitte Bison ; Björn-Ole Juhnke ; Nina Struve ; Dominik Sturm ; Felix Sahm ; Michael Bockmayr ; Carsten Friedrich ; André von Bueren ; Nicolas U. Gerber ; Martin Benesch ; David T. W. Jones ; Marcel Kool ; Annika K. Wefers ; Ulrich Schüller ; Stefan Pfister ; Stefan Rutkowski ; Martin Mynarek
The OTAGO exercise program is effective in decreasing the risk for falls of older adults. This research investigated if there is an indication that the OTAGO exercise program has a positive effect on the capacity and as well as on the performance in mobility. We used the data of the 10-months observational OTAGO pilot study with 15 (m = 1, f = 14) (pre-)frail participants aged 84.60 y (SD: 5.57 y). Motion sensors were installed in the flats of the participants and used to monitor their activity as a surrogate variable for performance. We derived a weighted directed multigraph from the physical sensor network, subtracted the weights of one day from a baseline, and used the difference in percent to quantify the change in performance. Least squares was used to compute the overall progress of the intervention (n = 9) and the control group (n = 6). In accordance with previous studies, we found indication for a positive effect of the OTAGO program on the capacity in both groups. Moreover, we found indication that the OTAGO program reduces the decline in performance of older adults in daily living. However, it is too early to conclude causalities from our findings because the data was collected during a pilot study.
