Feasibility for Clinical Physical Mobility Measurement using Hearing Aid Accelerometers

Hearing Aids (HA) present a new wearable sensor platform as they provide an important function to the wearer (hearing assistance) as well as a location for other sensors. The inclusion of accelerometers could enable the measurement of mobility activity such as walking or standing up/sitting down. In this paper a method to assess three standard clinical mobility measures: Five times Sit to Stand (5xSTS), Timed Up and Go (TUG) and 2-minute walk is proposed and assessed for data collected in a pilot study of community living older adults and laboratory subjects. These tests combine walking with stand-up/sit-down and turning actions. The report shows that the proposed algorithm to measure the time to complete the 5xSTS and TUG provides results that match the standard clinical measures using a stopwatch. The report also shows that the proposed step detection algorithm provides a step count for the 2-minute walk. In all cases the algorithm error is well below the minimal clinically important difference for these assessments. The result is a potential for these important assessments that are predictive of fall risk to be completed for community living adults through their hearing aids as they go about their daily activities enabling more frequent measures than possible through clinical visits alone. More timely information on functional changes can support early intervention to mitigate deterioration or prevent falls.