Age-related loss of muscle mass and strength affects almost 15 percent of adults 60 and over. Also known as sarcopenia, clinicians often prescribe home-based exercise programs as a remedy to this loss. However, once clinicians assign the exercises, they face a major obstacle: patient compliance.
A new Bluetooth-enabled device is designed to help overcome this obstacle by remotely monitoring patients’ home-based exercise programs. Developed by a team of researchers from Dartmouth and UNC, BandPass will help clinicians to identify exercise correctness and send alerts if a patient isn’t doing their exercises. This project is funded by the NIH’s National Institute on Aging.
According to UNC Geriatrics associate professor and project researcher Dr. John Batsis, “[BandPass] has already shown promising results with high accuracy and reliability during the pilot study we ran here at UNC as part of our Phase I award. With this award and continued collaboration, there is great potential to springboard BandPass into a commercial product,” he added.