A novel smart somatosensory wearable assistive device for older adults’ home rehabilitation during the COVID-19 pandemic

• Published in: Frontiers in public health 2023-09, Vol.11, p.1026662-1026662
• Main Authors: Chang, Chien-Hsiang, Lien, Wei-Chih, Chiu, Tseng-Ping, Yang, Tai-Hua, Wei, Chun-Chun, Kuo, Yu-Liang, Yeh, Chung-Hsing, Liu, Bo, Chen, Pin-Jun, Lin, Yang-Cheng
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: COVID-19; frailty; home rehabilitation; Public Health; telemedicine; usability; wearable assistive device
• ISSN: 2296-2565; 2296-2565
• DOI: 10.3389/fpubh.2023.1026662

BackgroundDue to the Coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19) related social distancing measures and health service suspension, physical activity has declined, leading to increased falling risk and disability, and consequently, compromising the older adult health. How to improve the quality of older adult life has become a crucial social issue.ObjectiveIn traditional rehabilitation, manual and repetitive muscle training cannot identify the patient's rehabilitation effect, and increasing the willingness to use it is not easy. Therefore, based on the usability perspective, this study aims to develop a novel smart somatosensory wearable assistive device (called SSWAD) combined with wireless surface electromyography (sEMG) and exergame software and hardware technology. The older adult can do knee extension, ankle dorsiflexion, and ankle plantar flexion rehabilitation exercises at home. Meanwhile, sEMG values can be digitally recorded to assist physicians (or professionals) in judgment, treatment, or diagnosis.MethodsTo explore whether the novel SSWAD could improve the older adult willingness to use and motivation for home rehabilitation, 25 frail older adult (12 males and 13 females with an average age of 69.3) perform the rehabilitation program with the SSWAD, followed by completing the system usability scale (SUS) questionnaire and the semi-structured interview for the quantitative and qualitative analyses. In addition, we further investigate whether the factor of gender or prior rehabilitation experience would affect the home rehabilitation willingness or not.ResultsAccording to the overall SUS score, the novel SSWAD has good overall usability performance (77.70), meaning that the SSWAD makes older adult feel interested and improves their willingness for continuous rehabilitation at home. In addition, the individual item scores of SUS are shown that female older adult with prior rehabilitation experience perform better in "Learnability" (t = 2.35, p = 0.03) and "Confidence" (t = -3.24, p = 0.01). On the contrary, male older adult without rehabilitation experience are more willing to adopt new technologies (t = -2.73, p = 0.02), and perform better in "Learnability" (t = 2.18, p = 0.04) and "Confidence" (t = -3.75, p