Volume 51 Number 1, 2014
Pages 1 — 14
Abstract — Sensing and monitoring technologies offer enormous potential to enhance the quality of healthcare provided to persons with lower-limb loss. Incorporation of these technologies into the rehabilitation process creates opportunities for a multidimensional exchange of timely, relevant, and meaningful health information between patients, their prostheses, and healthcare providers. Here, the authors envision a conceptual model for enhancing prosthetic rehabilitation through use of integrated physical and/or biological sensors and remote monitoring methods. Several specific applications that target treatment, diagnosis, and prognosis of health issues faced by persons with limb loss are proposed in an effort to demonstrate how collecting and using objective data can facilitate clinical decision making. Contemporary integrated sensors that may be used in these applications are reviewed and their limitations discussed. It is hoped that the considerations proposed here may serve to stimulate development of clinically useful monitoring and sensing technologies and promote their integration into routine amputation rehabilitation.
Key words: ambulatory monitoring, amputee, diagnosis, limb loss, outcome assessment, prognosis, prosthesis, remote sensing technology, therapy/treatment, wireless sensors.
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Last Reviewed or Updated Thursday, April 10, 2014 8:01 AM