■由于与冠状病毒病19(COVID-19)相关的社会疏远措施和卫生服务暂停,体力活动减少了,导致跌倒风险和残疾增加,因此,损害老年人的健康。如何提高老年人的生活质量已成为一个至关重要的社会问题。
■在传统康复中,手动和重复的肌肉训练不能识别患者的康复效果,增加使用它的意愿并不容易。因此,基于可用性的观点,这项研究旨在开发一种新型的智能体感可穿戴辅助设备(称为SSWAD),结合无线表面肌电图(sEMG)和exercame软件和硬件技术。老年人可以做膝盖伸展,踝关节背屈,在家进行足底屈曲康复锻炼。同时,sEMG值可以数字记录,以帮助医生(或专业人员)判断,治疗,或诊断。
■为了探索新型SSWAD是否可以提高老年人的使用意愿和家庭康复动机,25名虚弱的老年人(12名男性和13名女性,平均年龄为69.3岁)使用SSWAD进行康复计划,然后完成系统可用性量表(SUS)问卷和半结构化访谈进行定量和定性分析。此外,我们进一步调查性别或既往康复经验因素是否会影响家庭康复意愿。
■根据SUS总分,新型SSWAD具有良好的整体可用性性能(77.70),这意味着SSWAD使老年人感到感兴趣,并提高他们在家中持续康复的意愿。此外,SUS的单项得分显示,有康复经验的女性老年人在“学习能力”(t=2.35,p=0.03)和“信心”(t=-3.24,p=0.01)方面表现更好。相反,没有康复经验的男性老年人更愿意采用新技术(t=-2.73,p=0.02),在SSWAD中,“可学习性”(t=2.18,p=0.04)和“置信度”(t=-3.75,p<0.001)表现更好。此外,半结构化访谈的结果表明,SSWAD的操作具有高度的灵活性,从而减轻老年人在康复锻炼和长期使用期间的负担。
■这种新颖的SSWAD无论性别或老年人的先前康复经验如何,都能始终如一地收到积极的反馈。SSWAD可以作为老年人家庭康复的一种新方法,特别是在COVID-19大流行期间。老年人可以在家做康复锻炼,医生可以根据sEMG数据做出正确的判断或在线调整合适的治疗方法,哪个老年人可以同时知道他们的康复进展。最重要的是,老年人不必每次都去医院康复,这大大减少了时间和感染的风险。
Due 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.
In 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.
To 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.
According 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 < 0.001) with the SSWAD. In addition, the result of the semi-structured interview shows that the operation of the SSWAD is highly flexible, thus reducing older adult burden during the rehabilitation exercise and using them long-term.
This novel SSWAD receives consistently positive feedback regardless of the gender or prior rehabilitation experience of elders. The SSWAD could be used as a novel way of home rehabilitation for elders, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. Older adult can do rehabilitation exercises at home, and physicians could make proper judgments or adjust suitable treatments online according to the sEMG data, which older adult can know their rehabilitation progress at the same time. Most importantly, older adult do not have to go to the hospital every time for rehabilitation, which significantly reduces time and the risk of infection.