IBV is taking part in the EU Falls Festival dedicated this year to Technology in the prediction, detection and prevention of falls that is being held the 24th - 25th March in Stuttgart, Germany.

The European Union Falls Festival brings together leading academics, researchers, health care practitioners, clinicians, industry representatives and key stakeholders from across the globe to celebrate best practice research and innovation in the multidisciplinary study and implementation of falls prevention in older people.

The IBV researcher Juan Vicente Durà will participate in the Parallel Session regarding Footwear and Sensing.

The quantification and analysis of human motion using wearable sensors has witnessed considerable advancement in recent years due to MEMS progress and miniaturization as well as the large scale availability of smartphones. The outcomes of such analyses are crucial in the fields of activity monitoring, gait analysis and fall prevention; these outcomes provide clinicians with highly reliable information that can be used to diagnose the early onset of a mobility-related disease or injury risk and propose individual interventions to improve the mobility status of an elderly person, a stroke patient or an athlete, for example.

The use in daily life of wearable sensors such as accelerometers, gyroscopes, GPS, barometers and pressure sensors is often accompanied by the issue of sensor placement. A large number of sensors placed on several body locations are hindering and obtrusive whereas sensors placed on a single body location can suffer from lower accuracies in providing certain movement parameters.

Footwear has been emerging as a preferred location for several human motion analysis applications, since sensors can be embedded unobtrusively into personal footwear in the form of insoles. Moreover, the foot is an ideal location for gait analysis and pressure measurement.

This workshop focuses on state-of-the-art applications of footwear-based sensing in the fields of activity monitoring, gait analysis, fall risk assessment, real-time biofeedback, rehabilitation and running performance in the framework of four distinct EU projects: FARSEEING, WIISEL, Runsafer and CuPiD. Three lectures will be given on the following topics:

• Activity monitoring, gait analysis and mobility evaluation of elderly persons in daily life http://farseeingresearch.eu/
• Treating gait impairments of patients with Parkinson's disease by means of real-time biofeedback in daily life - http://www.cupid-project.eu/
• Relevance of using footwear and insoles for fall risk prediction, mobility and activity monitoring http://www.wiisel.eu/
• Inertial sensors in footwear for runners with possible applications for fatigue detection http://www.runsafer.eu.