Excellent reliability of the six-minute walking distance measured by FeetMe^®insoles at home

Abstract

Background Wearable technology provides an opportunity for new ways of monitoring patient gait remotely, through at-home self-administered six-minute walk tests (6MWTs). The purpose of this study was to evaluate the reliability and repeatability of FeetMe® insoles, a wearable gait assessment device, for measuring the six-minute walking distance (6MWD) during tests conducted independently at home by healthy volunteers. Methods Participants (n=21) performed two 6MWTs at home while wearing the FeetMe® insoles, and two 6MWTs at hospital while wearing FeetMe® insoles and being assessed by a rater. All assessments were performed with a one-week interval between tests, no assistance was provided to the participants at home. Results and conclusion The agreement between the 6MWD measurements made at baseline and at Week 1 was good for all test configurations and was highest for the at-home FeetMe® measurements, with an intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) of 0.95, standard error of the measurement (SEM) of 15.02 m and coefficient of variation (CV) of 3.33%, compared to ICCs of 0.79 and 0.78, SEMs of 25.65 and 26.65 and CVs of 6.24% and 6.10% for the rater and FeetMe® measurements at hospital, respectively. Our work demonstrates that the FeetMe® system could provide a reliable solution allowing individuals to self-administer 6MWTs independently at home.