Why Measuring Real-World Mobility Matters

Note: This is the executive summary of our white paper on Why Measuring Real World Mobility Matters. To see the full paper with a comprehensive set of references, please download the paper here.

Mobility loss is common, and the implications are profound

Mobility loss is common, with 32% of adults over 75 in the EU having ‘severe difficulty’ walking, as well as 10% of those aged 65-74. This loss of mobility has significant consequences, as it is a fundamental indicator of health – so much so that it has been referred to as ‘a 6th vital sign’.

These consequences go well beyond the physical, and have profound impacts on a patient’s mental health, social life, and even their sense of identity. Mobility loss also creates significant burdens for health systems due to the cost of walking related adverse events. Costs attributable to falls were approximately $50b in the US alone. 

Existing methods of measurement have significant shortcomings

Existing mobility endpoints based on one-off assessments and patient self-reporting are resource intensive and lack sensitivity. They also provide a measure of capacity in a laboratory setting, rather than performance in the real-world. 

This has constrained their use in clinical trials and clinical care, impacting therapeutic development and clinical management of a range of conditions that affect mobility, such as Parkinson’s disease, MS, COPD, CHF and hip fractures.

Wearable sensors have the potential to measure mobility in new & better ways

Digital technologies that measure mobility in the real-world can overcome many of the shortcomings associated with more traditional methods.

• They can measure mobility in everyday life, producing ecologically valid assessments.

• They can also measure mobility over a period of time, reducing measurement issues associated with point-in-time assessments (variation due to patient health, motivation, etc.).

• Because real-world measures of mobility are unsupervised, there are no white coat effects. We get mobility performance in the real-world, rather than mobility capacity in a lab-setting.

This can greatly benefit therapeutic development, clinical care & healthcare systems

Real-world mobility data could provide more comprehensive, relevant, and patient-centric insights for clinical trials. It also has the potential to promote more individualised care, provide greater scope for early intervention, enhance remote care and empower patients with better and more timely data.

We believe the technologies and methodologies developed in the Mobilise-D project (https://mobilise-d.eu/) will be instrumental in making this potential a reality. The project delivered the first mobility data from a wearable sensor to be robustly technically and clinically validated in real-world settings, as we will outline in subsequent white papers.

The team at Enoda was instrumental in the successful delivery of the Mobilise-D project, and is ready to apply this groundbreaking technology in the clinical trial and clinical care spheres.