mHealth 6-minute walk test – accuracy for detecting clinically relevant differences in heart failure patients
- Resource Type
- Conference
- Authors
- Ziegl, Andreas; Rzepka, Angelika; Kastner, Peter; Vinatzer, Hannah; Edegger, Kurt; Hayn, Dieter; Prescher, Sandra; Moller, Volker; Schreier, Gunter
- Source
- 2021 43rd Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine & Biology Society (EMBC) Engineering in Medicine & Biology Society (EMBC), 2021 43rd Annual International Conference of the IEEE. :7095-7098 Nov, 2021
- Subject
- Bioengineering
Heart
Performance evaluation
Global navigation satellite system
Filtering
Hospitals
Mobile applications
Kalman filters
Our 6-minute walk test app could help heart failure patients to continuously self-monitor their functional capacity in a telehealth setting
- Language
- ISSN
- 2694-0604
Heart failure is a serious disease which increases mortality as well as hospital admission rates for affected patients. Disease management programs supported by telehealth solutions are cost-effective approaches for reducing all-cause mortality and heart failure hospitalizations. A 6-minute walk test (6MWT) app could help heart failure patients to self-monitor their functional capacity. We have developed such an application capable of tracking the geolocation, guiding users through a 6MWT and providing the walked distance after six minutes. Besides common global navigation satellite system (GNSS) filtering methods like a Kalman filter, we have investigated the impact of positioning the device (tablet) and GNSS reception on the accuracy of the test. In a field experiment, we gathered 166 6MWT recordings with the developed mobile application. Applying the Kalman filter reduced the overall relative error from 35.5 % to 3.7 %. Wearing the tablet on the body led to significantly better results than holding it in the hand (p < .001). The average accuracy of 2.2 % of body-worn measurements was below previously defined thresholds for reliable results. It thus allows to define a procedure on how to perform and integrate an accurate 6MWT in telehealth settings for clinical decision support in heart failure patients.