The Accuracy of Commercially Available Fitness Trackers in Patients after Stroke

Abstract

Background: Fitness trackers could represent an easy-to-use and cheap tool for continuous tracking of physical activity of stroke survivors during the period of their recovery at home. The aim of the study was to examine the accuracy of the Fitbit activity tracker in locomotor activity monitoring of stroke survivors with respect to gait disorders, walking speed, walking aid, and placement of the tracker on body. Methods: Twenty-four ambulatory stroke survivors (15 men and 9 women) with locomotion/gait disorder were involved in the study. Patients underwent two walking tests with the Fitbit Alta HR trackers attached on 5 different places on body. The accuracy of the trackers has been analyzed on 3 groups of patients—those walking without any walking aid, those using a single-point stick and those using a rolling walker. Results: For no-aid patients, the most accurate place was the waist. Patients with a single-point stick revealed the smallest deviations for a tracker attached to a healthy lower limb, and patients with a rolling walker revealed the smallest deviations for a tracker attached on the paretic lower limb. Conclusion: An accuracy comparable with the healthy population can be reached for all of the three groups of patients, while fulfilling the conditions for minimum speed of 2 km/h and optimal placement of the trackers with respect to a walking aid and aspect to impairment.

Empowering stroke survivors beyond inpatient rehabilitation: the STRIDE program

“…Because our outcome measure in STRIDE focused on adherence rather than a particular activity metric, we were able to broaden our enrollment criteria, thereby, ensuring the accessibility of STRIDE across a wide range of physical ability levels, technology proficiencies, and socioeconomic realities. It is important to acknowledge the increasing utilization of commercially available activity monitors to assess post-stroke mobility (Peters et al, 2021) and the ongoing work needed in this field to determine the accuracy of these devices in stroke (Holubová et al, 2022). A trade-off in our work, which encouraged Fitbit wear on the paretic upper extremity for purposes of donning/doffing ease, was likely data accuracy.…”

“…A trade-off in our work, which encouraged Fitbit wear on the paretic upper extremity for purposes of donning/doffing ease, was likely data accuracy. Recent work has shown that the accuracy of these devices in stroke varies according to body placement which, in turn, varies according to the level of assistive device use during ambulation (Holubová et al, 2022). Future iterations of STRIDE that may utilize tracker metrics as primary or secondary outcome measures, may therefore revisit tracker placement in order to achieve both donning/doffing ease and data accuracy.…”