Methods for clinical evaluation

Kenney, LPJ; Kyberd, P; Galpin, AJ; Chadwell, AEA; Granat, MH; Thies, SBA; Head, JS

Abstract

This chapter begins with an introduction to the challenges of measurement in upper limb prosthetics. This is followed by an overview of the traditional approaches to evaluation and their strengths and weaknesses. By traditional approaches, we mean tests involving observation of a participant performing a structured activity or reporting on their everyday experiences and behaviours through questionnaires. These approaches generally involve little, if any, instrumentation and are still widely used. In the next section, we report on the evaluation tools which have emerged from studies of human motor control; these include observation of the kinematics during the performance of tasks and measures which may reflect attentional demands, such as gaze behaviours and brain activity. As the so-called conventional methods and the human-motor-control-based methods either observe behaviours over a short period of time or ask people to accurately recall and report on their behaviours, both have inherent limitations. Finally, we report on methods which can be used to capture, in detail, the everyday upper limb behaviours of people in the real world and discuss the opportunities such real-world approaches open up around data analysis at scale.

Citation

Kenney, L., Kyberd, P., Galpin, A., Chadwell, A., Granat, M., Thies, S., & Head, J. (2020). Methods for clinical evaluation. In K. Nazarpour (Ed.), Control of Prosthetic Hands : challenges and emerging avenues (29-67). Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET). https://doi.org/10.1049/PBHE022E_ch3

• Publication Date: Dec 1, 2020
• Deposit Date: Jan 4, 2021
• Pages: 29-67
• Book Title: Control of Prosthetic Hands : challenges and emerging avenues
• ISBN: 9781785619854-(ebook);--9781785619847-(print)
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1049/PBHE022E_ch3
• Publisher URL: https://doi.org/10.1049/PBHE022E_ch3
• Related Public URLs: https://doi.org/10.1049/PBHE022E