Project Overview

Falls and mobility impairment are common side effects of aging. Falls represent a significant injury risk and limiting mobility to avoid falls can reduce independence, quality of life, and contribute to further declines in mobility. The most cost effective way to reduce the health, economic and quality of life impact of falls in older adults is to prevent falls in the first place. In our work and that published by others we see the potential of miniature and low cost electronics for developing an affordable new insole technology to more effectively prevent falls and their related injuries. Feedback from seniors has highlighted the importance of discrete assistive technologies. In addition, for our industry partner Kintec Footlabs, developing custom insoles for seniors to assist with sensory impairment, pressure relief and pain is an important element of their business. Integrating smart technology, balance monitoring and active feedback into an insole platform that many seniors already use in a cost effective way has the potential to impact fall prevention and mobility on a large scale. In this first stage of the project we will be advancing instrumented insole technology that we developed to monitor plantar pressure patterns during daily activities to integrate active vibration feedback. Active vibration feedback at both the sensory and subsensory levels has been shown to improve balance, reduce falls and increase mobility. We will use this proof of concept insole technology to define and assess the vibration intensity, sensory and actuator locations and mobility performance in a cohort of seniors to tune settings and identify the design criteria for an effective system. A low cost instrumented insole provides the potential to gather quantitative population data on balance and mobility for the first time and the opportunity to deploy injury prevention technologies at a meaningful scale.