Article

Sensing and monitoring technologies offer enormous potential to enhance the
quality of healthcare provided to persons with lower-limb loss. Incorporation of
these technologies into the rehabilitation process creates opportunities for a
multidimensional exchange of timely, relevant, and meaningful health information between patients, their prostheses, and healthcare providers.
Here, the authors
envision a conceptual model for enhancing prosthetic rehabilitation through use
of integrated physical and/or biological sensors and remote monitoring methods.
Several specific applications that target treatment, diagnosis, and prognosis of
health issues faced by persons with limb loss are proposed in an effort to
demonstrate how collecting and using objective data can facilitate clinical
decision making. Contemporary integrated sensors that may be used in these
applications are reviewed and their limitations discussed. It is hoped that the
considerations proposed here may serve to stimulate development of clinically
useful monitoring and sensing technologies and promote their integration into
routine amputation rehabilitation.

Langue : ANGLAIS