Feasibility of Using Accelerometers in Hospitalised Older Adults
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Using Accelerometers to Measure Physical Activity in Older Patients Admitted to Hospital: a Feasibility Study in the Department of Medicine for the Elderly, Addenbrooke’s Hospital
IRAS ID
221619
Contact name
Roman Romero-Ortuno
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 0 months, 1 days
Research summary
There is a need to investigate the connection between how active an older person is in hospital and how well they recover physically after an illness. To help us design a future study to answer this question we first need to find out whether we can measure how active a person is whilst admitted to hospital using 2 sensors called accelerometers, which would be attached to a person’s thigh and ankle. Using 2 sensors should allow us to tell from the data whether a person is lying, sitting, standing or walking. Using 1 sensor would only be able to tell us if the person is standing or walking or either sitting or lying.
Although 2 sensors should provide higher quality data for us to analyse, we do not know if patients would find it acceptable to have 2 sensors attached to their legs for the purpose of research. The primary aim of our study is to find out if people find it acceptable to wear 2 sensors on their thigh and ankle whilst they are in hospital for the purposes of research. We also plan to assess the usefulness of the collected information.We plan to recruite 24 patients (12 men, 12 women) who are admitted to the Department of Medicine for the Elderly wards in Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge. To be eligible, patients must be able to provide informed consent. We will ask the participants to wear the sensors for 48 hours.
To assess whether the patients find the sensors acceptable we have designed a questionnaire with a Patient and Public Involvement group for the participants to complete after we remove the sensors. We will also measure whether the sensors were worn for the full 48 hours, and record any concerns raised by the participant, family or staff.
REC name
South Central - Hampshire A Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
17/SC/0219
Date of REC Opinion
5 May 2017
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion