The title of the project is "Connecting the Dots: Working with people with multiple sclerosis to map real-world walking experiences to digital mobility outcome measures.”
This project is currently being developed to apply for funding from the Health Research Board. If successful, it will run for 3-4 years. As a research partner you will work as part of the research team by attending meetings, providing feedback and suggestions on how to recruit and what questions are important to ask. Research experience is not required. If funded, there will be renumeration for the time given to the project.
If you have any questions about the project and what might be involved, please get in touch with Alison at Alison.keogh@tcd.ie.
The current idea for the project focuses on the use of wearable devices to measure changes in walking as a result of MS. Measuring walking in people’s daily environments would allow researchers and clinicians to better understand the impact of MS on people’s lives. Wearable devices offer us the chance to do this, by taking the data from them to create new outcome measures of walking. These digital outcome measures may then be used in clinical trials in the same way that other outcome measures, such as scans, already are.
This proposed study will act as a follow up to a recent project which has developed a number of digital walking outcomes. Before progressing further with the creation of these outcomes, we need to make sure that we select the best measure available. This includes understanding which outcomes are most important for people with MS. We plan to interview up to 50 people with MS, from diverse backgrounds, in multiple countries across Europe, to understand (i) how MS impacts their daily lives, and (ii) to map these experiences to the developed digital outcome measures.