133407Vitrue Autonomous Functional Assessment Feasibility StudyClosedFeasibility StudiesISCF"In modern healthcare, not only must we focus on prolonging a person's life, but also on maintaining the quality of that life. The opportunity this project addresses is the radical improvement of functional assessment, a key step in measuring and managing a range of conditions such as frailty, stroke, risk of falls and musculoskeletal disorders affecting millions. Functional health information is a powerful resource enabling clinicians to maintain patient quality of life, however it is let down by imperfect assessment tools that are subjective, have poor repeatability and are insensitive to incremental change. If clinical staff had access to longitudinal, scientific and accurate data it would give them full insight into the patient's daily health and would naturally lead to improved patient outcomes. Additionally, there is a large economic incentive to revolutionise this type of assessment. For example, due to shortcomings of current assessment tools and the huge pressures on clinical staff the NHS spends an estimated £700 million annually on patients awaiting assessment prior to being discharged from hospital or who then require emergency readmission within 30 days. The aim of this project is to create a huge leap in functional assessment accuracy and efficiency. Vitrue will develop a new, motion capture based system to accurately monitor and report on a patient's functional ability. Our system will enable occupational and physical therapists to treat more patients, more effectively by providing them with far more advanced and modern assessment tools. This directly leads to both improved patient outcomes and a reduction in the number of people kept needlessly in hospital. More importantly it breaks the cycle of elderly patients physically deteriorating while waiting for discharge leading to further loss of functional health, loss of independence and ultimately readmission. The data provided by Vitrue's system will lead to substantially lower NHS costs and more importantly enable the clinician or therapist to focus on optimal care and treatment for those in need and speedier discharge for those kept waiting. This will ultimately benefit patients in all aspects of their lives."