 | | Physical activity is crucial to ease the effects of and prevent the development of chronic diseases. Portugese researcher André Dias is studying just how important this is, but his work is hampered by unsuitable sensors. Photo: Jan Fredrik Frantzen, NST. |
Recently back from Munich and a research study on patients with cystic fibrosis, Dias has a large dataset at hand and will use statistics and artificial intelligence in the next stage of his PhD thesis: building models to predict the outcome of a disease - given how active patients are.
Battery life too short
But the research conditions are not ideal. Dias has had 10 patients using heart rate sensors and motion sensors on their ankles or waist, but the approved medical sensors that exist don't quite cut it.
"The ideal sensor would have power and memory capacity for six months, but today they don't last more than two weeks before they need recharging. And users don't recharge them, they just stop using them when the battery runs out," he explains.
In addition, most sensors are awkward to wear. And heart rate sensors that are attached to the body can irritate the skin, causing discomfort for the patient. In short, they disturb your daily life as well as running out of batteries.
But then again, hospital sensors are not meant to be worn for more than hours at a time, unlike equipment for research.
Motivating with sensors
Dias' PhD project is concerned with how useful sensors can be to motivate users to increase their activity level. For people with chronic diseases it is especially important to keep up their activity when they come home from rehabilitation. Otherwise the effect of rehabilitation is nullified within weeks.
"If you wear a sensor over a longer period, it could give you useful feedback on how your health develops over time and in relationship to your activity levels. Our research aims to find out just how effective this could be."
"But we definitely could do with sensors that are better suited to do long-term monitoring," Dias says in closing.
 Tromsø Telemedicine Laboratory
This article is published as part of the 2008 annual report for Tromsø Telemedicine Laboratory. Click here to access the whole report...
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