Functional Movement Analysis

Traditional weight bearing and gait analyses in clinical settings may be limited, restricted and challenging for the researchers, clinicians and patients involved. Recent technology development in healthcare brought to biomechanical research the possibility to use wearable devices (e.g. plantar-force insoles) outside laboratory settings, thus allowing the weight-bearing measurements without all the concerns previously described. However, a full understanding of its use, limitations, relevant parameters, and implementation in clinical settings/trials is still reduced. The aim of this study is to develop a health digital diagnostics tool to enable weight-bearing symmetry measurements and analyses on clinical settings, focusing in the functional recovery following total hip arthroplasty (THA). This group of patients is particularly interesting from a research point of view, as the weight-bearing symmetry recovery is not totally restored following THA. To achieve our main goal several subprojects are being carried out with retrospective data of telemetric THA patients (www.orthoload.com), with healthy cohorts, with elective THA patients (pre and post THA) in a mono-center study (Krankenhaus Märkisch-Oderland GmbH, Wriezen) and with THA patients treated with and advanced therapy (www.hipgen.eu).