Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Rehabilitation and Assistive Technologies
Date Submitted: Jun 30, 2022
Date Accepted: Feb 26, 2023
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Efficacy of commercially available wearable gait improvement devices: a consumer-centered review
ABSTRACT
Background:
Increasing number of wearable technological devices or sensors are commercially available for gait training. These devices are important in providing therapy outside the clinical setting. The mechanisms of therapeutic effect and target goals vary across these devices, as does the availability and strength of the evidence supporting these claims. It is important that all relevant information on efficacy, accuracy and reliability of the system effectiveness, safety, and usability, is available to public to make informed purchase.
Objective:
The global aim of this customer-centered review is to identify, for commercially available wearable devices targeting gait patterns and walking behaviour, the strength of the evidence underlying the claims of effectiveness.
Methods:
As there is no systematic or reproducible way to identify technologies that are available to the public to help improve gait , we used a pragmatic and snowball approach from a consumer’s perspective of what they are most likely to use. We used several systematic reviews on biofeedback technology to identify the preliminary set of devices that acted as a seed to identify other technologies – snowball. This was combined with a Google search using terms such as ‘biofeedback devices walking’, and ‘wearable sensors’. For included devices, information on the target population, mechanism of feedback, evidence for efficacy/effectiveness, and commercial availability were obtained from the websites and scientific databases, PubMed, Ovid Medline, Scopus, or Google Scholar. A level of evidence was assigned to each study involving the device using the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine (Oxford) classification. We are proposing a reporting guidelines for the clinical appraisal of devices targeting movement and mobility.
Results:
The search yielded a total of 17 devices that claim to target gait quality improvement through various feedback: 11 commercially available, and 6 at various stages of research and development. Most of these devices were targeted to people living with Parkinsons. Of the 11 devices, only four technologies had some level of evidence to support the claims.
Conclusions:
The way information is currently available to general public is insufficient and at times misleading to make an informed choice. The evidence supporting the effectiveness does not cover all aspects of technology uptake. Commercially available technologies bridge the gap to provide continuity of therapy outside the clinical setting but as it stand there is a need demonstrate effectiveness to support claims made by the technologies.
Citation
