Integrating a gait analysis test in hospital rehabilitation: A service design approach

Gait analysis with motion capture (MoCap) during rehabilitation can provide objective information to facilitate treatment decision making. However, designing a test to be integrated into healthcare services requires considering multiple design factors. The difficulty of integrating a ‘micro-service’ (gait test) within a ‘macro-service’ (healthcare service) has received little attention in the gait analysis literature. It is a challenge that goes beyond the gait analysis case study because service design methods commonly focus on the entire service design (macro-level). 

This study aims to extract design considerations and generate guidelines to integrate MoCap technology for gait analysis in the hospital rehabilitation setting. Specifically, the aim is to design a gait test to assess the response of the applied treatments through pre- and post-measurement sessions. 

We focused on patients with spasticity who received botulinum toxin treatment. A qualitative research design was used to investigate the integration of a gait analysis system based on inertial measurement units in a rehabilitation service at a reference hospital. The methodological approach was based on contrasted methodologies from the service design field, which materialize through observation techniques (during system use), semi-structured interviews, and workshops with healthcare professionals (13 patients, 10 ‘proxies,’ and 6 doctors).