An Affordable Balance Assessment Tool for Broader Patient Reach
Host Institution: Grand River Hospital
A team of bioengineers and doctors from the University of Waterloo and the Grand River Hospital at Freeport in Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario has developed a balance assessment toolkit that costs under $3,000. The team envisions expanding the reach of more accurate balance assessment to physicians, physiotherapists and other healthcare professionals in a wide range of healthcare settings.
Clinically assessing balance helps patients avoid injury and maintain independence, and is critical to care planning. However, patients living outside major centres are typically assessed with manually-timed tests and visual observation since “gold standard” assessment equipment costs over $20,000, a fee that is out of reach for most primary care clinicians.
The innovation developed by the Affordable Balance Assessment Tool project team uses inexpensive wearable technologies to collect patient data using tablet software, providing test results and possible interventions to improve health in real-time. The data can also be reviewed later to look for further insights.
With an award of $50,000 in project funding, the project team will test how well the tool performs among rehabilitation patients at the Grand River Hospital at Freeport to generate insights on usability with a view to commercializing the tool in the future.