Developing electronic textiles for fall and near-fall detection

Tell us a bit about you and your research?

My name is Zahra Rahemtulla. I recently completed my PhD and I am now working as Research Fellow in Sports Science at NTU. I am continuing to utilise my background in physics and engineering to work in human movement. My research has focused on using co-design methods to develop electronic textiles for healthcare and wellbeing. My research is multidisciplinary, which has allowed me to bridge the gap between technology and design by using multimodal methods and collaborative activities. I have been committed to open research practices from the beginning of my PhD, as I feel that is has allowed me to be more inclusive in my research. I am passionate about ensuring that as researchers we are inclusive in our research, specifically by involving women in technology and health innovations. I would like to expand my work to focus on ensuring that creating health equity is priority, which would be impossible without open research practices.

Tell us about a project you were involved in which used Open Research practices and principles?

The motivation for the research was to create an electronic textile (E-textile) that older women would want to wear to detect falls and near-falls. Due to the ageing population in the UK, there has been significant strain on social and healthcare systems. A major risk factor for independence in older adults is falling, and consequently, the ability to detect near-falls is essential for preventative healthcare and beneficial to the user. E-textiles are a valuable tool for wearable sensing as they are flexible, inconspicuous and comfortable.  The focus of this work has been older women as they tend to fall more often than men and are overlooked when designing gender-neutral products. The research aimed to find the best sensor to detect falls and near-falls, the optimal position of the sensor on the body, how to design an E-textile garment that older women are willing to wear and developing a functioning E-textile.

Describe the open research practice(s) employed in your study. Why did you select them?

I employed a variety of open research practices. Firstly, I used a human-centred design approach to create E-textiles for older women. This is a participatory method where the users’ needs, wants and desires are used as design considerations. This used interviews to gain the users’ insights. This approach was necessary as there is no literature pertaining HCD for fall or near-fall detection systems. In addition, within E-textile research, there tends to be a focus on the technology rather than the people who would benefit from the technology. Furthermore, designing clothing for women as they age is incredibly complex. This highlights the importance of using a HCD approach to ensure that their needs are met, and hopefully aid in the uptake and correct usage of these systems. These insights were used to design three prototypes, which were then showcased in a focus group and altered to their preferences.

To continue to develop the E-textile for other users, I collaborated with occupational therapists (OTs) in Nottingham County Council. This research uses a co-design method including OTs, users and E-textile experts. By including OTs, we have been able to understand additional problems that potential users have and learnt how to adapt the E-textile for their use cases . I have collaborated with academics within different disciplines at NTU and the University of Nottingham to get expertise from others and to further my research.

My research has been openly disseminated. Quantitative anonymised datasets have been made available for download on Figshare under a CC-BY 4.0 license, that has been linked to journal articles, conference proceedings and my thesis using a DOI.   All of my published work is open access and contains a data access statement with the DOI of the datasets. All of my work has been added to NTU’s institutional repository (IRep) and I have used persistent identifiers to ensure it can be found easily. The exception to this has been interview data, which has been added to the NTU Data Archive with restricted access to researchers, to ensure that the information will be used for research purposes.

Did you face any challenges in the project, and how did you overcome them?

Participatory methods and data sharing were not originally in my research plan. After looking into the field more, I concluded that working with intended users of electronic textiles, specifically when creating monitoring devices for older women was ignored.  I found that the underlying data for results reported in existing literature lacking , which meant I had to repeat similar experiments to understand their choices. While there have been a significant number of studies exploring fall and near-fall detection, the placement of the sensors is often not explained, and typically only one sensing location is used, which varies per study. Often, full experimental details were not presented, so it was unclear how they attached the sensors to the body. Additionally, each sensor used was different and they used varying sampling rates without explanation. This was frustrating and unnecessarily time-consuming, so I resolved to do things differently. I completed a study to find optimal sensor location for fall, and potentially near-falls as well as the sampling rate required. I then shared the dataset and the full methods used in the study.

I was encouraged by NTU and my supervisory team to adopt open research practices. The main challenge was that my supervisors were unfamiliar with some open research practices, but also realised that funders and publishers were asking about them more; it was unchartered territory. Therefore, they encouraged me to learn more about open research, how to plan it into my research from the beginning to develop a model of best practice that suited my discipline, including where and when it is appropriate to share data, how to make useful, informative datasets to help others make informed choices. As this was part of my contribution to knowledge for my thesis I had to wait until I had published my research to share the datasets.

What has been the impact of adopting open research practice(s)in your project?

Open research practices, such as collaborating with academics from other disciplines (including design and computer science), made my project more multidisciplinary, enabling me to utilise expertise from those disciplines, which in turn made the project more successful.

By sharing my datasets on Figshare under a CC-BY 4.0 license and publishing open access, while using persistent identifiers such as a DOI, I have ensured that my data is accessible, findable and freely available. Therefore, other researchers can use my methods and my datasets as well as secondary data to inform their research. Furthermore, the transparency of my research has made it reliable and reproducible for others.

The incorporation of the practice of participatory research methods, has allowed my work to be more relevant to the users, by ensuring that the prototypes developed in the research will be of benefit to the intended users.

My research group has recognised the rigour of my research and the attention it has received because of these open research practices, so they are keen to adopt them. They are publishing open access and using my expertise in sharing datasets to create comprehensive metadata files, along with ensuring their data is easy to understand. As a result, my ongoing role within the research group is to advocate for open research, model different approaches and support colleagues as they plan and implement ethical open research practices during their projects.

What did you learn from making this project ‘open’? Do you have any advice for others considering adopting open research practices?

Through this project, I found that if your research is based on developing something for users, you should include those users in some way, whether that be to develop the project, in the testing phase or throughout. I learnt that if you can embed open research practices into your project from the beginning eventually it can become second nature. I now believe that it is possible to incorporate a degree of openness into every project, irrespective of discipline and the type of project, but you don’t have to be open in every way if it is not appropriate or relevant. For example, it might not be possible to make all your data open, but you could document and share your processes or explore new ways to involve the people that your research is for.

My key advice is to start one of the practices and to keep going from there.

What are you working on now?

As an early career researcher, I am looking to find my own research identity. Following my PhD, I am publishing work related to my PhD and analysing interview data from occupational therapists on healthy ageing. I plan to use this data to support further research and in grant applications. I will be applying for a fellowship to help me gain research independence. Furthermore, I am involved in developing grants with my research group.

In my role, I am working on projects on biomechanics and human movement. As the open research expert within the group, I have supported colleagues and doctoral candidates with their data management plans and contributed to ethics applications. When developing projects with participants, I always encourage colleagues to consider how they recruit participants to ensure they are from diverse backgrounds. In addition, I am planning collaborative projects across the university.

Alongside my research I have been keen to get involved in EDI at the university. I have attended various workshops on EDI, including an Advanced HE workshop on Equity in Doctoral Education through Partnership and Innovation. I am also a member of the Women’s Network, the Race, Ethnicity and Cultural Heritage (REACH) Network and the Women in Physics Group with the Institute of Physics.