Patient and practitioner experience with clinical lumbar motion monitor wearable technology

Low back pain (LBP) is the leading cause of disability worldwide. Unfortunately, there is no gold standard for objectively quantifying low back function. The clinical lumbar motion monitor (CLMM), a wearable technology, has been developed to provide an objective measure of low back function. The evaluation for the patient is like playing a video game with their back. For health care practitioners the CLMM provides three metrics including overall impairment, structural/muscular and test reliability (do we have good data). This study had two goals. 1) To evaluate the ease of use for the patients. 2) To evaluate how the health care practitioners were able to use the results. Sixty-six low back pain patients were evaluated in the study and 18 health care practitioners were interviewed after receiving CLMM results on their patients. The patients were given a survey immediately after evaluation completion. The practitioners participated in a phone survey after all patient evaluations were completed. Ninety-two percent of the patients either agreed or strongly agreed that the monitor was comfortable and 98% either agreed or strongly agreed that the instructions were clear. One hundred percent of the health care practitioners agreed the test reliability metric was informative and provided a new perspective to their clinical impression. Overall LBP patients were satisfied with the evaluation and health care practitioners thought the results added to their clinical impression. The CLMM technology provides an objective quantitative measure of low back function that may change the way health care practitioners treat LBP patients.