Accepted for/Published in: JMIR mHealth and uHealth
Date Submitted: Apr 19, 2019
Date Accepted: Dec 16, 2019
Design and Evaluation of a Mobile Phone Based Gait Assessment Application for the Elderly: An Empirical Study among 140 Older Chinese Adults
ABSTRACT
Background:
Gait disorder is common among older adults. With increases in the use of technology among older adults, a mobile application provides a solution for older adults to self-monitor their gait quality in daily life.
Objective:
The objective of this study was to develop a gait-monitoring mobile application (Pocket Gait) and evaluate its acceptability and usability among potential older users.
Methods:
The application was developed to allow older adults to track their gait quality, including step frequency, step intensity (RMS), step regularity, step symmetry and step variability. One hundred and forty-eight community-dwelling older adults were recruited from two cities in China: Beijing and Chongqing. They walked in three ways (single task, dual task and fast walking) using a smartphone with the gait-monitoring application installed. Then, they completed an acceptability and usability survey after the walk test. User acceptability was measured by a questionnaire including four quantitative measures: perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, ease of learning and intention to use. Usability was measured using the System Usability Scale (SUS). Interview were conducted with participants to collect open-ended feedback questions.
Results:
The acceptability of the gait-monitoring application was positive among older adults. Participants identified the usability of the system with an overall score of 59.7 (SD = 10.7) out of 100. Older adults from Beijing scored significantly higher SUS compared with older adults from Chongqing (p<.05). The age of older adults was highly associated with their SUS score (p<.05). Older adults identified improvements including larger font sizes, inclusion of reference values of gait parameters and inclusion of heart rate and blood pressure.
Conclusions:
The mobile application is a health management tool for older adults to self-manage their gait quality and prevent adverse outcomes. It will be important to take factors such as age and region into consideration when further designing a mobile phone-based gait assessment application. The feedback of the participants would help to design more elderly-friendly products.
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