PhysioEnabler: Intelligent sensor system to aid motor rehabilitation with a web application

• Autor(a) principal: Batoca, Pedro Miguel Assis
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10071/26984
• topic: Internet of things; Internet of medical things; Smart sensors; Physical rehabilitation; Web application; Cloud; Internet das coisas médicas; Sensores inteligentes; Reabilitação física; Aplicação web

Physical rehabilitation is a current topic due to the global aging population and an increase in chronic diseases and there are several initiatives and studies to bring new and innovative solutions in this area. One of the main challenges is the lack of data that can help to diagnose and provide more adequate treatments to patients. The current walking aids help improve the patients’ day-to-day by providing greater independence in their activities but don’t allow the extraction of any objective data for analysis. With the advances in IoT technologies, it is possible to enhance the aids’ functionality with sensors and other devices to extract information that can help physiotherapists improve their decisions and influence the patients’ course of treatment. The prototype presented in this dissertation proposes to add force, IMU (sensor that combines accelerometer, gyroscope, and magnetometer), and RFID (allows the identification with radio signals) sensors to a crutch and to use a microcontroller connected to these sensors to extract the data and send it to an endpoint in the cloud via MQTT protocol. The data processing takes place with cloud functions that also store the results. The information is available for patients and physiotherapists to view and analyze in a front-end developed in Python. The application also allows the creation of custom exercise plans according to the patient’s needs and is available for physiotherapists and patients to view.