A Feasibility Study on Using a Kinect-Based Human Motion Tracking System to Promote Safe Patient Handling

Lower back injuries are prevalent among healthcare professionals, especially nursing assistants working in skilled nursing facilities. Previous studies have shown that by using good body mechanics in pulling and lifting, one can significantly reduce the risk of lower back injuries. In this paper, we report a feasibility study on using a low-cost human motion tracking system to promote safe patient handling in skilled nursing facilities. The system is designed specifically to track nursing assistants for improper bending activities and alert them whenever such a wrong activity is detected in realtime. The objective of the feasibility study is to characterize the reliability of the system in two respects: (1) whether or not the system can consistently and accurately detect wrong activities, and (2) whether or not the system can ensure the privacy of the patients and other visitors entering a given room. In addition to confirming good system reliability, this feasibility study provides us valuable feedback regarding areas of improvements before the deployment of the system at our partnering skilled nursing facility.