Continuous monitoring of walking, standing, sitting and lying in elderly with the use of wearable sensors

Hip fractures in elderly patients are often treated with surgery and rehabilitation. During rehabilitation the elderly periodically perform tests to monitor the progress. However, this is not reliable because the clinimetric tests capture merely a moment of a patients rehabilitation process and are administered in low frequency. To get a more reliable image of elderly patients they should be continuously monitored with wearable sensors. In this research, six healthy elderly subjects were continuously monitored with a MOX sensor, Dynaport sensor and three APDM sensors. The goal of this study was to assess which features could distinguish between lying, sitting, standing and walking. Several features were found that had the ability to distinguish between the different movements using the different sensors. Further research is needed to see which features in combination with which sensors will be best in a future improved algorithm to classify lying, sitting, standing and walking.