Volunteers from the user network COLABORAR are participating in a European research project. COTIDIANA – Mobile Patient-Centred System to Improve Drug Trials and Care of Older adults with Rheumatic Diseases – is a project co-funded by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, FFG, Confédération Suisse, AAL Programme and the European Union. The project gathers a multidisciplinary research team comprising developers, UX/UI specialists, and clinical researchers.
At this phase, the study consists of using smartphones to collect motion data while participants perform walk tasks and wrist joint movements. The data that is being collected is fundamental for researchers to train sensing algorithms. When the final system is available, patients with rheumatic diseases can be assessed for physical function in ambulatory conditions. This means that the smartphone will track hand dexterity, gait and physical activity, and sociability patterns, and all these data will inform medical doctors about the disease status and evolution. This new method has some advantages over traditional assessments at medical offices. Patients can be assessed more frequently without the need to go to the hospital. Plus, the clinical information collected by the sensors in the smartphone is potentially more objective, as it reflects the status of the patient at a daily basis, which is potentially more accurate than collecting subjective information through questionnaires and punctual assessments by doctors, usually each 3 or 6 months.