Feasibility Study of Outpatient Monitoring by Fitness Activity Trackers in a Radiation Oncology Department

Purpose/Objective(s): To monitor Radiation Oncology (RO) patient
workflow and at to obtain an index of the quality of life of patient during
radiation treatment. Information and Communication Technology monitoring
devices (ICT-MD), through a Pervasive Computing Approach
(PCA), allow the localization of patient and at the same time the archiving
of diverse biometrical data such as heart rate, one of the most robust, noninvasive
measure of stress response. Here we describe a pilot study on the
introduction of ICT-MD in a RO Department.
Materials/Methods: For our application, we focused on Activity Tracker
(ACT) bracelet (Amiigo, Amiigo Inc., Salt Lake City, UT), an ICT-MD
able to measure SpO2 variation, acceleration and skin temperature without
any patient interaction according to PCA paradigm. We selected an
inexpensive ACT designed mainly for the fitness consumer market that
provides a set of application program interfaces (APIs) for direct readout
of sensor data, making the raw data available. An in-house software program
was developed in Matlab (MathWorks, Natick, MA) for biometric
raw data processing for indirect data measurements (heart rate). The builtin
Bluetooth connection is used for patient presence detection and transmission
of the collected information to the receivers installed in the RO
Department. A first detector is used to recognize the patient and to automatically
update his/her data in the health record system. A second
receiver is in the LINAC room to limit patient exchange and treatment
errors. The integrated hardware/software prototype has been accordingly
set up at our institution.
Results: Tests on the prototype has been successfully performed for each
single component, for each combination of components and for the whole
system. More than 50% of the collected biometric series turned out to be
clean enough for Matlab post processing. The heart rate estimates were
positively assessed against the ECG gold standard (5-10% discrepancies).
The accelerometer acquisitions were exploited for a covariate analysis with
heart rate series in order to enhance the specificity, e.g. by distinguishing
between a physiological heart rate acceleration from a pathological condition.
None of the 80 tests performed in RO Department for presence
detection and identification failed.
Conclusion: The realized prototype has been fully validated and its
performance revealed encouraging to ameliorate the efficiency of RO
patient work-flow management. Furthermore, the system is suitable for
monitoring patient distress during the whole radiation treatment course.
The proved feasibility of the framework warrants its application in the
clinical practice.

Feasibility Study of Outpatient Monitoring by Fitness Activity Trackers in a Radiation Oncology Department

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