Return to work after stroke is a complex process which can be facilitated or impeded by organizational, social or personal factors, as well as accessibility to appropriate services. Implications for Rehabilitation Following a period of dedicated inpatient rehabilitation, there is a need to integrate community-support services to optimize return to work among stroke survivors. A dedicated community stroke support liaison officer may help to facilitate the transition between the hospital and the community and workplace environment. Education provided by healthcare professionals is necessary in the community and the workplace to ensure that family, friends and employers are aware of the impairments, activity limitations and participation restrictions of the stroke survivor.

A footwear-centric body area network employing a directional antenna is compared with waist-centric systems using omnidirectional and directional antennas. The effect of body movements on path gain is analysed for two bands at 3.99 and 7.99 GHz. The path gain and data rate results demonstrate that footwear-centric configurations are equivalent to or better than waist-centric body area networks.

It is reported that wearable electronic devices are to be used extensively in the next generation of sensors for sports and health monitoring. The information obtained from sensors on the human body depends on the biological parameters, the measurement rate and the number of sensors. The choice of the wireless protocol depends on the required data rates and on system configurations. The communication link quality is achieved with narrowband technologies such as Bluetooth or Zigbee, provided that the number of sensors is small and data rates are low. However, real-time measurements using wideband channels may also be necessary. This paper reports narrowband link performance at 2.45 GHz for comparison with two UWB channels centered at 3.95 GHz and 7.25 GHz. A monopole antenna covering 2.45 GHz and UWB is optimized for an on-body communication link between the footwear and the wrist. The cumulative distribution function of several path loss measurements is reported and compared for a subject standing and walking. Results show that the larger bandwidth in the UWB channel reduces fading and stabilizes the channel predictability.

UWB antennas are suitable for on-body links in body area networks because of the low power, high data rates and short range. As defined in the Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) Standard, impulse radio technology must provide a fidelity factor greater than 0.8 to ensure reliable communications. In this paper the fidelity factor of a directional and an omnidirectional antenna located on footwear are computed for different body area locations. The effects of different grounds on the fidelity factor are also considered.

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