Smart textiles for telerehabilitation

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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.