m-SFT: A Novel Mobile Health System to Asses the Elderly Physical Condition

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Date
2020-03-06Author
Abstract
The development of innovative solutions that allow the aging population to remain
healthier and independent longer is essential to alleviate the burden that this increasing segment of the
population supposes for the long term sustainability of the public health systems. It has been claimed
that promoting physical activity could prevent functional decline. However, given the vulnerability of
this population, the activity prescription requires to be tailored to the individual’s physical condition.
We propose mobile Senior Fitness Test (m-SFT), a novel m-health system, that allows the health
practitioner to determine the elderly physical condition by implementing a smartphone-based version
of the senior fitness test (SFT). The technical reliability of m-SFT has been tested by carrying out a
comparative study in seven volunteers (53–61 years) between the original SFT and the proposed
m-health system obtaining high agreement (intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC) between 0.93 and
0.99). The system usability has been evaluated by 34 independent health experts (mean = 36.64 years;
standard deviation = 6.26 years) by means of the System Usability Scale (SUS) obtaining an average
SUS score of 84.4 out of 100. Both results point out that m-SFT is a reliable and easy to use m-health
system for the evaluation of the elderly physical condition, also useful in intervention programs to
follow-up the patient’s evolution.
Description
open access article
Citation : Ureña, R., Chiclana, F., Gonzalez-Alvarez, A., Herrera-Viedma, E., Moral-Munoz, J.A. (2020) m-SFT: A Novel Mobile Health System to Asses the Elderly Physical Condition. Sensors, 20(5), pp.1462.
Research Institute : Institute of Artificial Intelligence (IAI)
Peer Reviewed : Yes