New application turns smartphone into health monitor 

Researchers have developed a new smartphone app that monitors how heart and lung patients walk and can alert doctors when their symptoms worsen. 

GaitTrack, an app developed by researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the U of I at Chicago, turns a smartphone into a sophisticated medical device. 

Unlike other apps that merely count steps, GaitTrack uses eight motion parameters to perform a detailed analysis of a person's gait, or walking pattern, which can tell physicians much about a patient's cardiopulmonary, muscular and neurological health.

 

According to Schatz, gait is sometimes called the "sixth vital sign" - after temperature, blood pressure, heart rate, respiratory rate and blood oxygen level.

 

Gait speed involves several systems of the body working together in coordination, so changes in gait can be a sign of trouble in one or more systems. 

 

Doctors often use an assessment called the six-minute walk test for patients with heart and lung disease, such as congestive heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and asthma. 

 

The Illinois team used GaitTrack to administer six-minute walk tests to 30 patients with chronic lung disease and found that it monitored more accurately - and more cheaply - than the medical accelerometers. 

 

The phone would periodically collect data, analyse it and keep tabs on the patient's status, alerting the patient or patient's doctor when it detects changes in gait that would indicate a decline in health so that treatment could be adjusted responsively.