Wearability Assessment of a Wearable System for Parkinson's Disease Remote Monitoring Based on a Body Area Network of Sensors

Sensors

Jorge Cancela²  Matteo Pastorino²  Alexandros T. Tzallas¹  Markos G. Tsipouras¹  Giorgios Rigas¹  Maria T. Arredondo² 

[1] Unit of Medical Technology and Intelligent Information Systems, Dept. of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Ioannina, 45110 Ioannina, Greece; E-Mails:;Life Supporting Technologies, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Avenida Complutense 30, Madrid 28040, Spain; E-Mails:

关键词: compliance;    Parkinson's disease;    Body Area Network (BAN);    remote monitoring;    motor assessment;   

DOI  :  10.3390/s140917235

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

Wearable technologies for health monitoring have become a reality in the last few years. So far, most research studies have focused on assessments of the technical performance of these systems, as well as the validation of the clinical outcomes. Nevertheless, the success in the acceptance of these solutions depends not only on the technical and clinical effectiveness, but on the final user acceptance. In this work the compliance of a telehealth system for the remote monitoring of Parkinson's disease (PD) patients is presented with testing in 32 PD patients. This system, called PERFORM, is based on a Body Area Network (BAN) of sensors which has already been validated both from the technical and clinical point for view. Diverse methodologies (REBA, Borg and CRS scales in combination with a body map) are employed to study the comfort, biomechanical and physiological effects of the system. The test results allow us to conclude that the acceptance of this system is satisfactory with all the levels of effect on each component scoring in the lowest ranges. This study also provided useful insights and guidelines to lead to redesign of the system to improve patient compliance.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2014 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.