Solutions are needed to satisfy care demands of older adults to live independently. Wearable technology (wearables) are one approach to offer a viable means for ubiquitous, sustainable and scalable monitoring in habitual free-living environments. Gait has been presented as a relevant (bio) marker in ageing and pathological studies, with objective assessment achievable by inertial-based wearables. Commercial wearables have struggled to provide accurate analytics and have been limited by non-clinically oriented gait outcomes. Moreover, some research grade wearables also fail to provide transparent functionality due to limitations in proprietary software. Innovation within this field is often sporadic with large heterogeneity of wearable types and algorithms for gait outcomes leading to a lack of pragmatic use. This review provides a summary of recent wearable gait assessment literature, focusing on the need for an algorithm fusion approach to measurement cumulating in the ability to better detect and classify falls. A brief presentation of wearables in one pathological group is presented, identifying appropriate work for researchers in other cohorts to utilise. Opportunities for how this domain needs to progress are also summarised.
Highlights• Wearables can meet older adults' needs for independent living.• Gait assessment is a (bio)marker within ageing and different pathologies.• Measuring gait with wearables has been innovative but fraught with inconsistencies.