title: Bodies in motion: monitoring daily activity and exercise with motion sensors in people with chronic pulmonary disease.
abstract: A primary goal of pulmonary rehabilitation is to improve health and life quality by encouraging participants to engage in exercise and to increase daily physical activity. The recent advent of motion sensors, including digital pedometers and accelerometers that measure motion as a continuous variable, have added precision to the measurement of free-living daily activity. Daily activity and exercise are variables of keen interest to proponents of the national health agenda, epidemiologists, clinical researchers, and rehabilitation interventionists. This paper summarizes issues related to conceptualizing and monitoring activity in the rehabilitation setting; reviews motion sensor methodology; compares motion-sensing devices; presents analysis issues and current and potential applications to the pulmonary rehabilitation setting; and gives practical applications and limitations.
authors.affiliation: Primary Care and Specialty Medicine Service, Health Services Research and Development Department, Department of Veterans Affairs Puget Sound Health Care System, Seattle Division, Seattle, WA 98108, USA. bonnie.steele@med.va.gov
authors.forename: Bonnie G
authors.initials: BG
authors.lastname: Steele
authors.forename: Basia
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Belza
authors.forename: Kevin
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Cain
authors.forename: Catherine
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Warms
authors.forename: Jeff
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Coppersmith
authors.forename: JoEllen
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Howard
mesh_terms: D015444:Exercise; D006801:Humans; D008991:Monitoring, Physiologic; D009068:Movement; D010809:Physical Fitness; D029424:Pulmonary Disease, Chronic Obstructive / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D016138:Walking