Development of a Post-stroke Upper Limb Rehabilitation Wearable Sensor for Use in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Pilot Validation Study
Open accessAbstract
The development of context-appropriate sensor technologies could alleviate the significant burden of stroke in Sub-Saharan African rehabilitation clinicians and health care facilities. However, many commercially available wearable sensors are beyond the financial capabilities of the majority of African persons. In this study, we evaluated the concurrent validity of a low-cost wearable sensor (i.e., the outREACH sensor) to measure upper limb movement kinematics of 31 healthy persons, using an 8-camera Vicon motion capture system as the reference standard. The outREACH sensor showed high correlation (r range: 0.808 to 0.990) and agreement (mean difference range: -1.60 to 1.10) with the reference system regardless of task or kinematic parameter. Moreover, Bland-Altman analyses indicated that there were no significant systematic errors present. This study indicates that upper limb movement kinematics can be accurately measured using the outREACH sensor, and have the potential to enhance stroke evaluation and rehabilitation in sub-Saharan Africa.
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Only 1 (2%) mHealth intervention used a wearable sensor-based approach.
“Only 1 (2%) mHealth interventions used a wearable sensor-based approach.”
From Current evidence on the use of mHealth approaches in Sub-Saharan Africa: A scoping review (2023) · cites this paper as [48]
The Methods (Apparatus; page unavailable) describe a wearable sensor, so the paper supports identifying a sensor-based approach. But the Discussion says integration into the outREACH mHealth application was planned, and the paper reports a sensor-validation study, not an mHealth intervention. It does not establish the count of one or the 2% figure. (LLM, conf=0.88)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredThe wearable sensor based mHealth approach is on pilot test stage.
“The other category of mHealth approaches which is based on wearable sensors [48] is on pilot test stage”
From Current evidence on the use of mHealth approaches in Sub-Saharan Africa: A scoping review (2023) · cites this paper as [48]
The Abstract describes a pilot validation of the outREACH wearable sensor in 31 healthy participants. The Discussion says integration of the sensor into the outREACH mHealth application is planned, so the paper supports a pilot-stage sensor but not a pilot test of the integrated mHealth approach or wearable-sensor approaches as a category. (LLM, conf=0.82)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredThe first paper [48] discusses the design of a wearable sensor-based mHealth system.
“The first paper [48] discusses about the design of a wearable sensor based mHealth system”
From Current evidence on the use of mHealth approaches in Sub-Saharan Africa: A scoping review (2023) · cites this paper as [48]
Methods > Apparatus describes the design and components of the wearable outREACH sensor. The Discussion links it to an mHealth application but says integrating the sensor into that application is future work; the paper does not describe a completed wearable sensor–based mHealth system. No page numbers are available in our copy. (LLM, conf=0.84)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredAcross the inspected literature, the design and development of wearable sensor-based mHealth approaches is reported only in two papers ([48] and [61]).
“However, across the inspected literature, the design and develop ment of wearable sensors based mHealth approaches is only reported in [48,61].”
From Current evidence on the use of mHealth approaches in Sub-Saharan Africa: A scoping review (2023) · cites this paper as [48]
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- Authors
- Hughes, C. M. L., Louie, A., Sun, S., Gordon-Murer, C., Belay, G. J., Baye, M., & Zhang, X.
- Affiliations
- San Francisco State University (US)
- University of Gondar (ET)
- Corresponding author
- Hughes, Charmayne M. L.
- ORCID
- Venue
- Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology
- Publisher
- Frontiers Media SA
- Published
- 2019-11-12
- Volume
- 7
- Pages
- 322-322
- ISSN
- 2296-4185 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC6861447
- OpenAlex
- W2983513247
- Cited by
- 25
- References
- 36
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 7 · 2022: 6 · 2021: 1 · 2020: 1 · 2019: 1
- FWCI
- 1.57
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Frontiers in Bioengineering and Biotechnology (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Funders
- National Science Foundation (1752255)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Rehabilitation › Stroke Rehabilitation and Recovery
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition › Context-Aware Activity Recognition Systems
- Physical Sciences › Engineering › Biomedical Engineering › Prosthetics and Rehabilitation Robotics
- Keywords
- wearable sensors, stroke rehabilitation, concurrent validity, motion capture comparison, sub-Saharan Africa, stroke assessment
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