Establishment of a Functional Screening Battery and Development of a Mixed-Reality Functional Assessment Device for Elderly with Sarcopenia

Sarcopenia is a prelude to changes of series of senile diseases. It refers to the loss of the skeletal muscle mass which leads to the deterioration of the muscle function followed by the problems on the motor function. It is therefore an essential issue for the early detection of the functional changes in the high risk population with sarcopenia so as to prevent the degradation of their health status. Nevertheless, the standard screening examination of the sarcopenia requires various assessment tools and precise medical instruments that is time-consuming. In addition, elderly tends to refuse the regular health examination because of travel issues or lack of self-health awareness. Examination unit also has difficulty to intensively track and instantly feedback the health status of elderly due to insufficient manpower. Since the screening examination is a great burden to both the examiner and elderly, it is not easy to disseminate the idea of the disability prevention. In response to fill the gap to popularize the screening examination of sarcopenia, this project aims to develop an easy-to-use mixed-reality functional assessment device for the elderly to operate in different communities and home environment. The elderly simply requires to wear a head-mounted device and follows the assessment instructions of the virtual therapist as if in the real medical institutions. The elderly would be comfortable to use the assistive device which helps to motivate them to regularly perform the self-assessment. Thus it will facilitate the goal of health management in terms of “early detection for early intervention.” Two steps of work would be done to fulfill the objective. The first part of this project aims at integrating the hardware and software to work out the prototype of the device. And the second part of the project will put the device into the clinical trial from a great elderly cohort population to evaluate its usability and validity. The application of cloud system and big data analysis technology would help to establish the diagnostic criteria and grading system for the functional screening battery of the sarcopenia. The ultimate goal is hopefully to utilize such assistive technology to popularize the concept of health management and disability prevention and promote the health of the elderly and patients with sarcopenia.

Project ID:PB10901-0069
External Project ID:MOST107-2221-E182-018-MY3