A novel approach in remote monitoring and assessment of patient balance

Balance disorders are prominent in the elderly population and also occur in patients of any age due to complications in the vestibular system which are often of idiopathic origin. Although there are no origin specific statistics, the National Institutes of Health data indicates that over 90 million of adult Americans experience dizziness and balance related problems. Worldwide, hearing or balance disorders affect close to 700 million people (1). A variety of sensory information and the brain interaction affect the complexity of balance mechanism. Therefore, an assessment of bal-ance, awareness to patients, continuous feedback to assist in maintaining equilibrium, and overall monitoring with a capability of an alarm to a patient and/or patient caring staff are essential and demand technological solutions (2). Current rehabilitation strategies monitor the patient move-ment to observe specific patterns that occur before a fall (3). While this type of rehabilitation strategy has been proven effective it leads to higher patient costs, due to observation, as well as increased use of medical facility resources. A useful test should be inexpensive to implement, easy to administer, usable in different environments and simple to interpret (4).