Views of individuals with spinal cord injury on the use of wearable cameras to monitor upper limb function in the home and community

Abstract

Objective: Hand function impairment after cervical spinal cord injury (SCI) can significantly reduce independence. Unlike current hand function assessments, wearable camera systems could potentially measure functional hand usage at home, and thus benefit the development of neurorehabilitation strategies. The objective of this study was to understand the views of individuals with SCI on the use of wearable cameras to track neurorehabilitation progress and outcomes in the community.

Design: Questionnaires.

Setting: Home simulation laboratory.

Participants: Fifteen individuals with cervical SCI.

Outcome Measures: After using wearable cameras in the simulated home environment, participants completed custom questionnaires, comprising open-ended and structured questions.

Results: Participants showed relatively low concerns related to data confidentiality when first-person videos are used by clinicians (1.93 ± 1.28 on a 5-point Likert scale) or researchers (2.00 ± 1.31). Storing only automatically extracted metrics reduced privacy concerns. Though participants reported moderate privacy concerns (2.53 ± 1.51) about wearing a camera in daily life due to certain sensitive situations (e.g. washrooms), they felt that information about their hand usage at home is useful for researchers (4.73 ± 0.59), clinicians (4.47 ± 0.83), and themselves (4.40 ± 0.83). Participants found the system moderately comfortable (3.27 ± 1.44), but expressed low desire to use it frequently (2.87 ± 1.36).

Conclusion: Despite some privacy and comfort concerns, participants believed that the information obtained would be useful. With appropriate strategies to minimize the data stored and recording duration, wearable cameras can be a well-accepted tool to track function in the home and community after SCI.

KEYWORDS:

• Wearable technology
• Egocentric cameras
• Upper limb
• Outcome measures
• Community-based functional assessment
• Surveys and questionnaires
• Privacy
• Spinal cord injury

Acknowledgments

This study was supported by the Rick Hansen Institute (G2015-30) and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (RGPIN-2014-05498). The authors wish to thank the study participants.