Wearable units like smartwatches and health trackers present detailed insights into our well being and bodily actions, providing a degree of element beforehand unknown to us. Not solely do these insights give us the uncooked information we have to enhance our well-being, however they may also be shared with medical professionals in order that they’ve a greater probability of detecting well being issues earlier, and of providing higher therapy plans for ongoing well being situations.
However these conventional self-tracking programs don’t meet everybody’s distinctive wants. Individuals with spinal twine accidents (SCI), as an illustration, should not well-served by them. Step counters and exercise trackers are of little to no significance to those folks, however a group of researchers on the College of Utah believes {that a} specifically tailor-made monitoring system may considerably enhance their well being. So that they got down to develop a system for monitoring the event of stress ulcers, that are a critical — and somethings deadly — complication that may develop in folks with minimal mobility.
Their answer, referred to as the Tilt Tracker , is a self-tracking system designed to assist people who depend on energy wheelchairs for mobility. Not like typical health trackers, Tilt Tracker focuses on stress reduction (PR) adherence, a vital facet of look after folks with extreme SCIs. Stress ulcers develop resulting from extended sitting with out repositioning, making PR workouts important for stopping these life-threatening wounds. Nonetheless, as a result of excessive frequency of required PR actions — as much as 50 instances a day — it’s straightforward for wheelchair customers to overlook or miss these essential repositioning actions. Tilt Tracker goals to unravel this drawback by way of real-time monitoring, reminders, and suggestions mechanisms.
The system was constructed across the Particle Boron IoT growth platform, a compact and highly effective module that permits wi-fi information transmission over LTE networks. This characteristic ensures that the system stays linked even when customers are outside or in any other case away from Wi-Fi, offering steady monitoring and recording of knowledge within the cloud. The Boron board is housed inside a customized 3D-printed enclosure, roughly the dimensions of a smartphone, which is mounted to the decrease backrest of the wheelchair utilizing detachable double-sided tape.
The Tilt Tracker features a multi-sensor setup to precisely detect PR actions and wheelchair occupancy. A DigiKey LSM9DS1 inertial measurement unit is put in beneath the seat pan, whereas an ADXL362 3-axis accelerometer is hooked up to the chair’s backrest. Collectively, these sensors measure the lean of the chair and whether or not correct stress reduction workouts are being carried out. Moreover, a force-sensitive resistor positioned beneath the seat cushion detects whether or not the wheelchair is occupied.
The system options three reminder modalities to help customers in performing PRs: haptic (vibration), audio (buzzer), and visible (LED gentle). A small vibration motor is mounted on the headrest to supply a mild nudge, whereas a piezo buzzer emits an audio cue when a PR is due. For visible suggestions, an LED indicator is positioned close to the joystick space. These a number of modalities be certain that people with various ranges of mobility and sensory operate can obtain reminders successfully.
Tilt Tracker was examined in a rehabilitation hospital with 9 inpatient contributors, demonstrating its feasibility and effectiveness in enhancing PR adherence. Early outcomes counsel that customers turned extra conscious of their PR routines and carried out PRs extra constantly when utilizing the system.
This "chairable" system could also be a glimpse into the way forward for assistive know-how, the place good, adaptive monitoring instruments could be tailor-made to satisfy the distinctive wants of various teams.
A high-level overview of Tilt Tracker (📷: T. Motahar et al.)
The system is constructed round a Particle Boron (📷: T. Motahar et al.)
