Real world intelligent monitoring of prosthesis and footwear
(REAL-PROF)

F.C. Schasfoort¹ , M. de Niet¹, J.B.J. Bussmann¹ and C.J. Nester²

¹Department of Rehabilitation Medicine, ErasmusMC, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
²Centre for Rehabilitation and Human Performance Research, University of Salford, Salford, UK

Real-Prof is an EU funded project which aims to develop technologies for monitoring lower limb amputees and patients with orthotic footwear. The main target is to identify tissue deterioration in an amputee’s stump or in a patient’s foot before it progresses too far. The project’s importance is clear because there are some 600.000 prosthesis users and 2.4 million therapeutic footwear users in the EU.

The project delivered pre-commercial prototype systems that can monitor patients in realtime everyday life, and transmit data to clinicians. In this way clinical intervention can occur as soon as problems start to develop. Sensors are integrated into the shoe or prosthesis socket and data communicated to a data storage and communication units worn of the waist. The waist worn data communications unit transmits data to remote clinicians via secure wireless communication. Prosthesis-system sensors are three accelerometers and three pressure strips. Footwear-system sensors are tri-axial insole force transducers for 8 areas under the foot and one Xsens MT9 sensor for acceleration and angular velocity.

Advanced data processing tools were developed to enrich and interrogate data in order to provide clinical decision support. Methods such as pattern recognition, statistical analyses, neural networks and biomechanical modelling were employed to estimate motions of lower limbs and forces under the feet, and to determine whether a subject is walking, sitting or standing.

This study presents user evaluations of the Real-Prof systems from the perspectives of actual users: clinicians and patients. Comments and feedback about hardware and software of the monitoring systems are presented (e.g. size of components, performance telecommunication unit, power use, doffing and donning, practical feasibility, cosmetics, data storage, prioritisation of data enrichment, clinical scenarios of abnormality, warning system). User evaluation data is critical for further development and ‘domestication’ of innovative systems such as Real-Prof.

Paper presented at Measuring Behavior 2005 , 5^th International Conference on Methods and Techniques in Behavioral Research, 30 August - 2 September 2005, Wageningen, The Netherlands.

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