New Internet of Medical Things for Home-Based Treatment of Anorectal Disorders

• Published in: Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) Vol. 22; no. 2; p. 625
• Main Authors: Zhou, Jerry, Ho, Vincent, Javadi, Bahman
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland MDPI AG 01-01-2022; MDPI
• Subjects: Anus; Applications programs; Biofeedback; biofeedback therapy; Biofeedback training; Biofeedback, Psychology; Care and treatment; Clinical medicine; Clinics; Cloud computing; Costs; COVID-19; Decision making; Defecation; Electromyography; Fecal incontinence; Feedback; Gastrointestinal diseases; High definition; home healthcare; Humans; Internet; Internet of medical things; Internet of Medical Things (IoMT); Internet of Things; Internet software; Manometry; Medical research; medical sensors; Medicine, Experimental; Monitoring, Physiologic; Patient compliance; Patient-centered care; Quality assessment; Quality of life; Rectal Diseases; rehabilitation; Remote monitoring; Sensors; Telemedicine; Australia; home healthcare; medical sensors; biofeedback therapy; rehabilitation; Internet of Medical Things (IoMT)
• ISSN: 1424-8220; 1424-8220
• DOI: 10.3390/s22020625

Home-based healthcare provides a viable and cost-effective method of delivery for resource- and labour-intensive therapies, such as rehabilitation therapies, including anorectal biofeedback. However, existing systems for home anorectal biofeedback are not able to monitor patient compliance or assess the quality of exercises performed, and as a result have yet to see wide spread clinical adoption. In this paper, we propose a new Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) system to provide home-based biofeedback therapy, facilitating remote monitoring by the physician. We discuss our user-centric design process and the proposed architecture, including a new sensing probe, mobile app, and cloud-based web application. A case study involving biofeedback training exercises was performed. Data from the IoMT was compared against the clinical standard, high-definition anorectal manometry. We demonstrated the feasibility of our proposed IoMT in providing anorectal pressure profiles equivalent to clinical manometry and its application for home-based anorectal biofeedback therapy.