Smart textiles for telerehabilitation

智能纺织品是一种仪表化的服装，可以与环境和用户互动。通过将传感器集成到纺织品中，可以捕获活动水平、心率和心电图等生理信号。这些数据对于向患者及其医疗保健提供者提供有关患者病情变化的信息是必不可少的。对于个体身体损伤的康复，能够在临床环境之外可靠地评估步态和步态质量的变化，并直接捕捉真实世界的功能表现，有可能极大地提高个性化和医疗保健服务的效率。在2019冠状病毒病大流行之后，世界各地的医疗机构被迫使用远程医疗解决方案，以便能够在保持社交距离和隔离的同时继续为患者提供重症护理。远程康复已经成为传统面对面护理的一种可行和理想的替代方案。然而，它的采用仍然受到能够不显眼和可靠地测量和监测患者健康状况的技术的限制。该项目的技术和科学挑战以及主要的发展潜力在于开发一种解决方案，能够在不可预测的环境中检测、分析和描述身体残疾个体的复杂运动。该项目是通过多伦多大学、荷兰布鲁维尤儿童康复医院和加拿大创新技术颠覆者Myant公司之间的战略合作伙伴关系实现的。此次合作结合了在康复工程解决方案方面具有丰富经验的多学科研究团队、专家临床医生和一家生产前沿嵌入式纺织品医疗设备的全球知名公司。我们的合作伙伴关系旨在开发一种智能纺织品，以彻底改变加拿大及其境外的康复服务。

Smart textiles are instrumented articles of clothing which can interact with their environment and the user. By integrating sensors into textiles, physiological signals such as activity level, heart rate and ECG can be captured. Such data can be imperative in providing patients and their health care providers with information about the changes in the patient's condition. For the rehabilitation of individuals' physical impairments, the ability to reliably assess changes in gait and gait quality outside of the clinical environment and directly capture real world functional performance has the potential to greatly improve personalization and efficiency of healthcare delivery.In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare organizations around the world have been forced to use telehealth solutions to be able to continue to provide critical care to patients while maintaining social distancing and isolation. Telerehabilitation has emerged as a viable and desirable alternative to traditional in-person care. However, its adoption is still limited by the availability of technologies capable of unobtrusively and reliably measuring and monitoring a patient's health status. The technical and scientific challenges of this project and major potential for advancement lie in the development of a solution capable of detecting, analyzing and characterising complex movements of individuals with physical impairments in unpredictable environments. This project is possible through a strategic partnership between the University of Toronto, Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital and Myant Inc, an innovative Canadian technology disruptor. The partnership combines a multidisciplinary research team with experience in engineering solutions for rehabilitation, expert clinicians, and a globally recognized company producing leading edge textile-embedded medical devices. Our partnership aims to develop a smart textile product to revolutionize rehabilitation services in Canada and beyond our borders.