Research Article
Evaluating Daily Life Activity Using Smartphones as Novel Outcome Measure for Surgical Pain Therapy
@INPROCEEDINGS{10.4108/icst.bodynets.2013.253635, author={Julia Seiter and Lucian Macrea and Oliver Amft and Sebastian Feese and Bert Arnrich and Konrad Maurer and Gerhard Tr\o{}ster}, title={Evaluating Daily Life Activity Using Smartphones as Novel Outcome Measure for Surgical Pain Therapy}, proceedings={8th International Conference on Body Area Networks}, publisher={ICST}, proceedings_a={BODYNETS}, year={2013}, month={10}, keywords={activity monitoring smartphone pain patients intervention}, doi={10.4108/icst.bodynets.2013.253635} }- Julia Seiter
Lucian Macrea
Oliver Amft
Sebastian Feese
Bert Arnrich
Konrad Maurer
Gerhard Tröster
Year: 2013
Evaluating Daily Life Activity Using Smartphones as Novel Outcome Measure for Surgical Pain Therapy
BODYNETS
ACM
DOI: 10.4108/icst.bodynets.2013.253635
Abstract
In this paper we investigate the potential of a smartphone to measure patients' changes in physical activity before and after a surgical pain relief intervention. Providing an objective intervention outcome measure to clinicians could enhance subjective assessments from patient questionnaires and contribute to optimal patient treatment. Thus, we show a proof of concept for our smartphone system providing physical activity from acceleration, barometer and location data to infer meaningful activity features that measure the intervention's outcome. In a case study, we monitored two patients carrying the smartphone 9 days before and another 9 days after a surgical intervention. Results indicate significant activity changes after intervention while the pain level decreased. Particularly physical activity in the home environment increased significantly for both patients where an averaged 98% increase in walking and a more than 150% gain in fast cadence was measured. Questionnaire assessed activity levels showed no meaningful correlations to activity measurements and turned out to be highly subjective.