A Smart Insole to Promote Healthy Aging for Frail Elderly Individuals: Specifications, Design, and Preliminary Results

Abstract

BackgroundOlder individuals frequently experience reversible “frailty syndrome,”, increasing incidence of disability. Although physical exercise interventions may delay functional decline, there are difficulties in implementing them and performing seamless follow-up at home. Very few technological solutions attempt to address this challenge and improve individual participation.ObjectiveOur objectives are to (1) develop a technological solution designed to support active aging of frail older persons, (2) conduct a first laboratory evaluation of the device, and (3) design a multidimensional clinical trial to validate our solution.MethodsWe conducted a first phase of multidisciplinary meetings to identify real end users and health professional’s unmet needs, and to produce specifications for the architecture of the solution. In a second phase, we performed laboratory tests of the first proposed prototype (a smart insole) with 3 healthy volunteers. We then designed an ongoing clinical trial to finalize the multidimensional evaluation and improvement of the solution.ResultsTo respond to the needs expressed by the stakeholders (frailty monitoring and adherence improvement), we developed a prototype of smart shoe insole to monitor key parameters of frailty during daily life and promote walking. It is a noninvasive wireless insole, which automatically measures gait parameters and transmits information to a remote terminal via a secure Internet connection. To ensure the solution’s autonomy and transparency, we developed an original energy harvesting system, which transforms mechanical energy produced by the user’s walking movement into electrical energy. The first laboratory tests of this technological solution showed good reliability measures and also a good acceptability for the users. We have planned an original iterative medical research protocol to validate our solution in real life.ConclusionsOur smart insole could support preventive strategies against disability in primary care by empowering the older patients without increasing the busy health professional’s workload.Trial RegistrationClinicaltrials.gov NCT02316600; https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/results?term=NCT02316600&Search=Search. Accessed: 2015-05-13 . (Archived by WebCite at http://www.webcitation.org/6YUTkObrQ).

Validity of Instrumented Insoles for Step Counting, Posture and Activity Recognition: A Systematic Review

“…Data transmission methods were Bluetooth, wireless and wire modules with sampling frequencies varying from 10 Hz to 400 Hz (see Table 2 and Table 3). For step detection, instrumented insoles were validated using visual observation [25,31,34,35], other devices (the Runtastic pedometer application and other smartphone applications) [34,36], or using a predefined number of steps [24,36,37] (see Table 3). To validate the instrumented insoles for posture and activity recognition, comparisons were made between the smart insole data and that collected from direct observation during data collection or from a video recording or from other wearable devices (2D accelerometer (ADXL202), gyroscope (Murata, ENC-03J), ActivPAL device, PPAC (plantar-pressure based ambulatory classification) and FF (foot force sensor) + GPS [18,26,31,32,33,38,39,40,41,42,43,44,45,46,47,48,49,50,51,52,53,54,55,56,57,58,59,60] (see Table 2).…”

“…In eight articles, the setting was not mentioned [38,39,51,52,54,56,57,59]. For step counting, evaluations were also performed in both laboratory (n = 3) [25,31,35,37] and community (n = 2) [24,34] environments, but for shorter durations (2 min, [31] and 6 minutes [35]), on predefined distances of 16 meters [25] and 720 m [34] or for a predetermined number of steps (50 steps [36] and 100 steps [24,37]) as illustrated in Table 3.…”

“…Error rates of 4% and 0% were reported for walking and running respectively [36]. In two articles, the reported measurement errors were 0% [34] and < 1% [37] for step counting during walking. The methods used to validate step counting were different from one article to another.…”

Design of a Smart Sole with Advanced Fall Detection Algorithm

“…A first prototype of a smart insole has been developed [63] To meet all these requirements, we designed a portable device with a small shape factor. The electronic card is illustrated in Figure 1 The smart sole is a part of a global operational fall detection system illustrated in Figure 2 in which we use a support robot (PR 2) totally programmable using Robot Operating System.…”

Biomedical Monitoring Technologies and Future Healthcare Systems

“…They can benefit from TLM installed in the home. An example of this system is proposed by the project RESPECT [94].…”