VALORA
VALid Open-access motoR Assessment
Agency
Fundació La Marató de la TV3 (Barcelona, Spain)
Lab
NRHB
Area
Virtual Rehabilitation
Years
2018 to 2020
Partners
i3B Institute
Description

The assessment of impairments related to gait, posture, upper limb function, and hand dexterity derived from neurological disorders, such as stroke, traumatic brain injury, spinal cord injury, multiple sclerosis, or Parkinson’s disease, are usually done in the clinic through standardized scales and tests. Clinical tools are easy to administer and not time-consuming, but may rely on subjective interpretations and be biased. Different instrumented tools have been proposed to overcome these limitations, providing quantitative measures of the motor function. However, their high cost and spatial requirements have limited their use to big facilities with significant financial resources. Latest advances in entertainment technology have given rise to low-cost off-the-shelf devices (less than 250€) that enable human-computer interaction through whole-body movements, weight transferences, or finger movements, with comparable accuracy to laboratory-grade systems. The hypothesis of project VALORA is that last-generation devices could be used for a comprehensive assessment of the motor function and provide objective, accurate, and reliable measurements in different neurologic disorders. We conjecture, therefore, that the psychometric properties, the low cost, and accessibility of assessment tools based on these devices would facilitate their use in the daily practice and promote research activities, also in small and medium-sized neurorehabilitation units. Project VALORA aims to determine the validity of low-cost tools to assess gait, posture, upper limb function, and hand dexterity in comparison to gold-standard systems and clinical tests in the mentioned neurologic populations and in healthy individuals. If the initial hypothesis is confirmed, project VALORA will provide therapists and researchers worldwide with the first open-access tool to assess the motor function of neurological patients with quantitative spatiotemporal and kinematic data, expressed not only in absolute terms but also compared with a sample of age-matched healthy individuals.