mHealth Apps for Older Adults and persons with Parkinson's Disease

EasyChair Preprint 5966

Abstract

Recent years observed massive growth in wearable technology, everything can be smart: phones, watches, glasses, shirts, crutches, etc. These technologies are prevalent in various fields: from wellness, sports, and fitness to the healthcare domain. The spread of this phenomenon led the World Health Organization to define the term 'mHealth' as "medical and public health practice supported by mobile devices, such as mobile phones, patient monitoring devices, personal digital assistants, and other wireless devices". Furthermore, mHealth solutions are suitable to perform real-time wearable biofeedback systems: sensors in the body area network connected to a processing unit (smartphone) and a feedback device (loudspeaker) to measure human functions and return them to the user as (bio)feedback signal.

Considering the COVID-19 pandemic emergency, never as today, we can say that the integration of mHealth systems in our society may contribute to a new era of clinical practice. After reporting a brief description of mHealth system architecture, this chapter explores several opportunities where innovative mHealth solutions could improve assessment and rehabilitation strategies for ageing people and persons with Parkinson's disease. This chapter presents solutions that need a therapist's supervision in a clinical context and others that can be self-administered and require only a smartphone as a stand-alone system. Finally, the Discussion highlights the challenges for future research and development of innovative mHealth systems.

Keyphrases: Ageing, Gait, IoT, Mobile Health applications (mHealth apps), Parkinson's disease, Rehabilitation, Wearable inertial sensors, assessment, biofeedback, older adults

@booklet{EasyChair:5966,
  author    = {Mattia Corzani},
  title     = {mHealth Apps for Older Adults and persons with Parkinson's Disease},
  howpublished = {EasyChair Preprint 5966},
  year      = {EasyChair, 2021}}