Patients’ evaluation based on digital motion acquisition

The development of mobile health systems has inspired a patient-centric approach to measure and monitor health metrics. The use of portable and wireless devices impacts on health outcomes, services and research. Sensors can be used to track basic parameters such as blood pressure, heart rate and body temperature but with the advent of motion capture sensors, also mobility, gait and the frequency, intensity and duration of physical activity can be measured, stored or transmitted. The emerging technologies pulled by the video gaming industry open a wide range of opportunities. New ways can be used to assess the performance and the level of disability or function in a patient after an adverse health event. Rehabilitative or disease progress as well as therapeutic impact can be assessed in a quantitative and ubiquitous mode. Different monitoring systems can be used by technicians in rehabilitation centers and hospitals or by patients themselves at home in everyday life. Within this context, the paper shows a novel approach aimed at increasing automatization in acquiring and using patient’s data referring to mobility so that the whole process requires human intervention only for the decisional steps. An application will be shown in the analysis of gait for people with a lower limb external prosthesis by means of optical and inertial motion capture sensors.