For various reasons, not all patients can carry out or directly monitor the progress of therapy in hospitals or therapy homes. This certainly hampers the patient’s recovery and therapy processes. Three students from the Department of Industrial Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Universitas Indonesia (DTI FTUI) designed the SoleMate innovation as a solution that combines sensor technology and applications to support independent physiotherapy at home.
Amanda Meitashani, Putri Nadia, and Lulu Afifa, DTI FTUI students in the class of 2021, designed Smart Insole Socks, which are equipped with special pressure sensors and a tracker application connected to SoleMate as a complementary application. This data will be visible to both the patient and the therapist to make it easier for them to monitor the patient’s progress in real-time from their home or rehabilitation centre. This application also monitors the progress of the patient’s mobility and leg strength.
“We developed this innovation by looking at the many cases of foot injuries that occur in athletes or patients who have had a stroke. Usually, regular physiotherapy is needed to treat and restore the patient’s body to its original condition. However, quite many patients are unable to attend physiotherapy routinely, either due to time, cost, distance, or other conditions. Independent therapy as an alternative to physiotherapy is also constrained by the difficulty of monitoring the independent physiotherapy process and the limited tools that translate the parameters of the development of physiotherapy results,” said Amanda, explaining the background of SoleMate’s innovation.
When using SoleMate, the therapist remains in control regarding the schedule and physiotherapy process that the patient needs to follow. Patients carry out therapy independently at home by wearing Smart Insole Socks, which then transmit data in real-time through the SoleMate application in two directions. SoleMate innovations also enable patients to communicate with their healthcare providers more effectively, making it easier to adjust treatment plans and monitor progress.
SoleMate consists of two components, namely Smart Insole Socks and SoleMate, an integrated application that functions to detect pressure using the sensor installed in the Smart Insole Socks and provides users with real-time reports regarding their physiotherapy progress. Smart Insole Socks operate with an FSR sensor and an ESP32 microcontroller that can detect foot surface pressure to measure the gait cycle in patients with foot injuries and stroke patients. The SoleMate application can read and record the results from smart insole socks and visualise them into parametric outputs that are easy for users to understand so that they can monitor their physiotherapy progress at home.
To support the independent physiotherapy process at home, the SoleMate application is also equipped with additional features such as self-therapy schedule reminders, self-therapy tutorials, consultations with therapists via messages, and self-therapy video recordings. Both the smart insole sock and the SoleMate application support good communication and remote monitoring between patients and therapists who have problems doing face-to-face therapy.
The Dean of FTUI, Prof. Dr. Heri Hermansyah, ST., M.Eng., IPU, said that “The SoleMate designed by FTUI students is a form of FTUI’s commitment to improving the quality of innovation research, community service, and service so that it has an impact on improving people’s welfare. Product design that can be integrated with applications through the use of IoT is a form of modern collaboration and applies to designing tools that can be useful for the physiotherapy industry. These tools and applications are not only technologically advanced, but they also save money and time. In the future, SoleMate can be developed not only to help patients with leg injuries but also patients with problems in other parts of the body who need regular therapy.”
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Bureau of Public Communications
Faculty of Engineering, Universitas Indonesia