A Miniaturised Wearable Motion-Monitoring Device to Promote Prevention of Physical Injuries

The cost of health care provision in developed countries is continually rising. To combat this, health economists propose reducing the need for expensive treatments by targeting preventative measures, encouragement of healthier lifestyle, enhanced health data collection and empowerment of patients in disease prevention and monitoring. The work presented here addresses such issues by introducing an inertial sensor network which enhances monitoring of sports activities through constraint movement identification and physiological injury prevention, potentially reducing total treatment costs. The sensor node consists of a suitable integrated circuit for measurement of any physical motion, a micro controller to gather information from the sensor and provide feedback to the user and a wireless connection unit for communication. A miniaturised wearable prototype with significant potential in terms of versatility has been manufactured.