Development of a Portable Sensorised Handle for the Objective Assessment of the Effectiveness and Concordance of Intervention Plans in Dementia

摘要

Dementia is a global issue which is rising rapidly, with 46.8 million people worldwide living with dementia in 2015. This number is expected to increase to 74.7 million by 2030. Some researches show that some kinds of exercises, such as resistance band exercises, would help to improve the memory and other abilities in patients with dementia. However, the true effectiveness of these activities is not really known due to the lack of objective assessment of efforts done during the long intervention time. Moreover, there is no way of measuring the actual activities performed by the patient without direct observation. As a consequence, it is impossible to measure the concordance between the patient and the therapist. For this purpose, we developed a sensorised handle to objectively measure and assess activities with the resistance bands. The small circuit board design can easily fit the same form factor of a standard handle. The low power design, embedded li-ion battery and on-board battery charger allow easy and long-time usage. This paper presents the initial experimental evaluation of the sensorised resistance band handle.