Geoff Fernie

Geoff Fernie
Toronto Rehabilitation Institute

BSc, PhD, MIMechE, CEng, PEng

About

224
Publications
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6,105
Citations

Publications

Publications (224)
Article
Full-text available
A key best practice to prevent and treat pressure injuries (PIs) is to ensure at-risk individuals are repositioned regularly. Our team designed a non-contact position detection system that predicts an individual’s position in bed using data from load cells under the bed legs. The system was originally designed to predict the individual’s position a...
Article
Full-text available
Background Decubitus ulcers are prevalent among the aging population due to a gradual decline in their overall health, such as nutrition, mental health, and mobility, resulting in injury to the skin and tissue. The most common technique to prevent these ulcers is through frequent repositioning to redistribute body pressures. Therefore, the main goa...
Article
Full-text available
Real-time gait monitoring of older adults and gait-impaired individuals while providing real-time biofeedback has the potential to help reduce trip-related falls. A low or unsuccessful Minimum Toe Clearance (MTC) is considered a predictor of tripping risk. Thus, increasing the MTC can be a key component in minimizing the likelihood of tripping. Thi...
Article
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Background Tele-rehabilitation, also known as tele-rehab, uses communication technologies to provide rehabilitation services from a distance. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of tele-rehab, where the in-person visits declined and the demand for remote healthcare rises. Tele-rehab offers enhanced accessibility, convenience, cost-...
Preprint
Full-text available
Background Tele-rehabilitation, also known as tele-rehab, uses communication technologies to provide rehabilitation services from a distance. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of tele-rehab, where the in-person visits declined and the demand for remote healthcare rises. Tele-rehab offers enhanced accessibility, convenience, cost-...
Article
Full-text available
Trip-related falls are a major concern especially for older adults and individuals with gait impairments as they can lead to serious injuries, hospitalizations and negatively impact the quality of life. A low Minimum Toe Clearance (MTC) can be a predictor of tripping risk and thus, increasing the MTC is a possible way to reduce trip-related falls....
Article
Full-text available
Hand hygiene is one of the most effective ways to prevent infection transmission. However, current electronic monitoring systems are not able to identify adherence to all hand hygiene (HH) guidelines. Location information can play a major role in enhancing HH monitoring resolution. This paper proposes a BLE-based solution to localize healthcare wor...
Article
Full-text available
Tele-rehabilitation has the potential to considerably change the way patients are monitored from their homes during the care process, by providing equitable access without the need to travel to rehab centers or shoulder the high cost of personal in-home services. Developing a tele-rehab platform with the capability of automating exercise guidance i...
Article
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It is important for humans to remain hydrated, particularly for older adults who are at a greater risk of dehydration and may forget to drink. Monitoring liquid intake and getting reminders to drink throughout the day is a useful solution to increase hydration levels. The objective of this paper is to automatically detect drink events from multiple...
Article
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Dehydration is a common, serious issue among older adults. It is important to drink fluid to prevent dehydration and the complications that come with it. As many older adults forget to drink regularly, there is a need for an automated approach, tracking intake throughout the day with limited user interaction. The current literature has used vision-...
Preprint
Full-text available
A critical best practice for prevention and management of pressure injuries is regularly repositioning individuals who are at risk of these injuries are when they are in bed. However, despite the widespread agreement of the need for regular repositioning (typically every two hours), adherence to repositioning schedules remains poor in the clinical...
Preprint
Full-text available
Pressure injuries are largely preventable, yet they affect one in four Canadians across all healthcare settings. A key best practice to prevent and treat pressure injuries is to minimize prolonged tissue deformation by ensuring at-risk individuals are repositioned regularly (typically every 2 hours). However, adherence to repositioning is poor in c...
Article
Full-text available
Fluid intake is important to prevent dehydration and reduce recurrent kidney stones. There has been a trend in recent years to develop tools to monitor fluid intake using “smart” products such as smart bottles. Several commercial smart bottles are available, mainly targeting health-conscious adults. To the best of our knowledge, these bottles have...
Article
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Recreational use of cannabis has been recently legalized in Canada, however, its impact on driving performance and safety is not well-defined. One experimental tool that can be implemented to better examine the link between cannabis use and driving impairment is driving simulation. Customized driving scenarios can be created to target and evaluate...
Article
Full-text available
Background Despite several measures to monitor and improve hand hygiene (HH) in health care settings, health care-acquired infections (HAIs) remain prevalent. The measures used to calculate HH performance are not able to fully benefit from the high-resolution data collected using electronic monitoring systems. Objective This study proposes a novel...
Article
Full-text available
Trip-related falls are one of the major causes of injury among seniors in Canada and can be attributable to an inadequate Minimum Toe Clearance (MTC). Currently, motion capture systems are the gold standard for measuring MTC; however, they are expensive and have a restricted operating area. In this paper, a novel wearable system is proposed that ca...
Preprint
BACKGROUND Despite several measures to monitor and improve hand hygiene (HH) in health care settings, health care-acquired infections (HAIs) remain prevalent. The measures used to calculate HH performance are not able to fully benefit from the high-resolution data collected using electronic monitoring systems. OBJECTIVE This study proposes a novel...
Article
Full-text available
Fluid intake monitoring is an essential component in preventing dehydration and overhydration, especially for the senior population. Numerous critical health problems are associated with poor or excessive drinking such as swelling of the brain and heart failure. Real-time systems for monitoring fluid intake will not only measure the exact amount co...
Article
Full-text available
With new advances in technology, remote monitoring of heart failure (HF) patients has become increasingly prevalent and has the potential to greatly enhance the outcome of care. Many studies have focused on implementing systems for the management of HF by analyzing physiological signals for the early detection of HF decompensation. This paper revie...
Chapter
Slips, trips and falls are among the major causes of injury in Canada. The main reason for trip-related falls is inadequate Minimum Toe Clearance (MTC) in the mid-swing phase of the gait cycle when the foot is at its maximum forward speed. Motion capture systems are the current gold standard for measuring MTC, however they are expensive and have a...
Article
This paper proposes a slip-prediction model to estimate the probability of footwear slipping on ice. The mode is based on slips that are induced when human subjects are challenged by walking in a test chamber with full control over environmental conditions. This technique will help to evaluate the slip resistance quality of winter footwear in an ec...
Article
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The use of slip-resistant winter footwear is crucial for the prevention of slips and falls on ice and snow. The main objective of this paper is to evaluate a mechanical testing method to determine footwear slip resistance on wet and dry ice surfaces and to compare it with the human-centred test method introduced by researchers at KITE (Knowledge, I...
Article
Full-text available
Introduction: Prolonged bed rest without repositioning can lead to pressure injuries. However, it can be challenging for caregivers and patients to adhere to repositioning schedules. A device that alerts caregivers when a patient has remained in the same orientation for too long may reduce the incidence and/or severity of pressure injuries. This p...
Article
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BACKGROUND Falls are among the leading causes of occupational injuries for workers exposed to outdoor winter conditions such as Personal Support Workers (PSWs). Slip resistant footwear is known to reduce the risk of falls, however, it is difficult to predict how well a particular boot will perform prior to purchasing them. Our recently developed Ma...
Article
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BACKGROUND Outdoor workers experience high injury rates in the winter due to slipping on ice and snow. Our testing program has demonstrated that most safety footwear does not provide adequate slip-resistance and/or comfort in icy conditions. OBJECTIVE Our objective was to determine which of the most commonly worn safety footwear available to outdo...
Article
Study objectives: Overnight fluid shift from the legs into the neck may contribute to the pathogenesis of snoring and obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). The present study investigates the effects of calf muscle electrical stimulation (ES) on reducing leg fluid accumulation while seated, subsequent rostral fluid shift on lying down, and the impact on s...
Chapter
Falls are a major healthcare concern especially in the older population and tripping is a primary cause. Tripping is defined biomechanically as an event at which the lowest part of the foot makes unanticipated contact with either the walking surface or objects during the swing phase of the gait cycle. Identifying an obstacle or uneven surface as a...
Chapter
Falls present a massive health risk for older adults. Half of those over 80 will fall at least once a year with 1 in 5 suffering a serious injury. Footwear outsole material that provides good grip on ice and snow can potentially prevent many of these injuries. Our team has developed our own promising patent-pending composite outsole materials with...
Article
Full-text available
Background: Improving hand hygiene compliance among healthcare professionals is the most effective way to reduce healthcare-acquired infections. Electronic systems developed to increase hand hygiene performance show promise but might not maintain staff participation over time. In this study, we investigated an intermittent deployment strategy to o...
Article
Full-text available
Background: Hand hygiene (HH) compliance in health care is usually measured against versions of the World Health Organization's "Your 5 Moments" guidelines using direct observation. Such techniques result in small samples that are influenced by the presence of an observer. This study demonstrates that continuous electronic monitoring of individual...
Article
Full-text available
Background: Poor hand hygiene by health care workers is a major cause of nosocomial infections. This research evaluated the ability of an electronic monitoring system with real-time prompting capability to change hand hygiene behaviors. Methods: Handwashing activity was measured by counting dispenser activations on a single nursing unit before,...
Article
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Leg fluid accumulation during sedentary behaviours such as sitting can lead to leg edema and associated adverse health consequences. This study investigates the use calf muscle electrical stimulation (ES) to reduce seated leg fluid accumulation. Thirteen non-obese, normotensive men (mean age 51 yr.) with sleep apnea were enrolled in the study. Part...
Chapter
As we age, we become more likely to encounter disabilities. Most are health-related conditions that can make it difficult to maintain our quality of life and make us more susceptible to further illness and injury. These conditions also make the lives of our caregivers (paid and informal) more difficult and place them at risk of burnout, illness, or...
Article
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Over 50 million United States citizens (1 in 6 people in the US) have a developmental, acquired, or degenerative disability. The average US citizen can expect to live 20% of his or her life with a disability. Rehabilitation technologies play a major role in improving the quality of life for people with a disability, yet widespread and highly challe...
Presentation
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Poster discussion at C109 NEW TECHNOLOGY IN SLEEP: DIAGNOSTICS AND THERAPEUTICS
Article
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Home care providers experience high occupational injury rates. Improving safety is becoming increasingly urgent as this sector expands to support the aging population. Caregivers identify assisting with toileting as a particularly frequent and difficult activity. This mixed-methods observational study identified and analyzed the toileting subactivi...
Article
In this study, textured composite surface with protruding fibers is developed, which exhibits extremely high coefficient of friction on ice. A novel composite material with improved wear resistibility is aimed to determine with the target to maintain its slip-resistance properties over extended use. Particularly, two thermoplastic elastomers are co...
Article
With growing demand for slip resistant surfaces, texturing composite surface is becoming increasingly popular now-a-days. One of the common techniques used for surface texturing includes photo-lithography. In article number 1600983, Ali Anwer and co-workers use fiber-debonding and pull-out method for texturing surfaces and investigate their coeffic...
Article
Fiber de-bonding and pull-out are well understood processes that occur during damage and failure events in composite materials. In this study, we show how these mechanisms, under controlled conditions, can be used to produce multifunctional textured surfaces. A two-step process consisting of (1) achieving longitudinal fiber alignment followed by (2...
Article
Full-text available
Background and objectives: Sleep apnea (SA) is a common, serious, but underdiagnosed condition. There is a need for more accessible and economic means of diagnosing SA in the home. The aim of this study was to test the validity of a cordless acoustic portable device (BresoDx™) for home diagnosis of SA compared with standard polysomnography (PSG)....
Article
Full-text available
Protective footwear is necessary for preventing injurious slips and falls in winter conditions. Valid methods for assessing footwear slip resistance on winter surfaces are needed in order to evaluate footwear and outsole designs. The purpose of this study was to utilise a method of testing winter footwear that was ecologically valid in terms of inv...
Article
More informative tests of winter footwear performance are required in order to identify footwear that will prevent injurious slips and falls on icy conditions. In this study, eight participants tested four styles of winter boots on smooth wet ice. The surface was progressively tilted to create increasing longitudinal and cross-slopes until particip...
Article
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The incidence of stairway falls and related injuries remains persistently high; however, the risk of stair injuries could be reduced through improved stairway design. The current study investigated dynamic balance control during stair descent and the effects of varying the step geometry. Data were collected from 20 healthy young and 20 older adults...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Polysomnography is a comprehensive modality for diagnosing sleep apnea (SA), but it is expensive and not widely available. Several technologies have been developed for portable diagnosis of SA in the home, most of which lack the ability to detect sleep status. Wrist actigraphy (accelerometry) has been adopted to cover this limitation. However, head...
Article
Full-text available
Grab-bars and transfer poles are common sit-to-stand aids for mobility limited older adults. This study investigated differences in kinetics and kinematics to characterize the lower-limb strength and dynamic balance requirements across different pole configurations and positions in nine mobility limited older adults. Poles were varied by location (...
Article
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Two main applications requiring high friction on ice are automobile tires and footwear. The main motivation behind the use of soft rubbers in these applications is the relatively high friction force generated between a smooth rubber contacting smooth ice. Unfortunately, the friction force between rubber and ice is very low at temperatures near the...
Article
Electronic and video monitoring systems (EMS/VMS) may improve hand hygiene by providing feedback, real-time reminders or via the Hawthorne effect. The aim of this systematic review was to assess the efficacy of EMS/VMS in improving hand hygiene or reducing the incidence of healthcare-associated infection (HCAI). Experimental and quasi-experimental...
Article
Full-text available
Adequate hand hygiene is often considered as the most effective method of reducing the rates of hospital-acquired infections, which are one of the major causes of increased cost, morbidity, and mortality in healthcare. Electronic monitoring technologies provide a promising direction for achieving sustainable hand hygiene improvement by introducing...
Article
Full-text available
Background: Healthcare worker hand hygiene is thought to be one of the most important strategies to prevent healthcare-associated infections, but compliance is generally poor. Hand hygiene improvement interventions must include audits of compliance (almost always with feedback), which are most often done by direct observation - a method that is ex...
Article
Full-text available
Adequate hand hygiene compliance by healthcare staff is considered an effective method to reduce hospital-acquired infections. The electronic system developed at Toronto Rehabilitation Institute automatically detects hand hygiene opportunities and records hand hygiene actions. It includes an optional visual hand hygiene status indication, generates...
Article
Background: Sleep-disordered breathing (SDB) is common and is associated with increased risk for cardiovascular disease. However, most patients remain undiagnosed due to lack of access to sleep laboratories. We therefore tested the validity of a single-channel monitoring setup that captures and analyzes breath sounds (BSs) to detect SDB. Methods:...
Article
Full-text available
Unlabelled: Sleep apnea (SA) is a very common disease with serious health consequences, yet is very under-diagnosed, partially because of the high cost and limited accessibility of in-laboratory polysomnography (PSG). The purpose of this work is to introduce a newly developed portable system for the diagnosis of SA at home that is both reliable an...
Article
Walking outdoors is often difficult or impossible for many seniors and people with disabilities during winter. We present a novel approach for conducting winter accessibility evaluations of commonly used pedestrian facilities, including sidewalks, street crossings, curb ramps (curb cuts and dropped curbs), outdoor stairs and ramps, building and tra...
Article
Full-text available
Background Careful hand hygiene (HH) is the single most important factor in preventing the transmission of infections to patients, but compliance is difficult to achieve and maintain. A lack of understanding of the processes involved in changing staff behaviour may contribute to the failure to achieve success. The purpose of this study was to ident...
Article
Falling is a leading cause of serious injury, loss of independence, and nursing-home admission in older adults. Impaired balance control is a major contributing factor. Results from our balance-control studies have been applied in the development of new and improved interventions and assessment tools. Initiatives to facilitate knowledge-translation...
Article
This study investigated the effects of caregiver experience on peak external forces and moments generated at the L5/S1 joint of the low back when maneuvering loaded floor-based and overhead-mounted patient lifting devices. Twenty caregivers were divided into more-experienced and less-experienced groups based on the product of two factors: their yea...
Article
We used the Recursive Least Squares algorithm and a predictor filter to automatically identify the start and stop times of 6 simple nursing activities. The dataset included continuous acceleration recordings obtained with a single accelerometer sensor attached to the backs of 8 nurses. The algorithm requires no training. It identifies the start and...
Article
Full-text available
To test the ability of a microphone recording system, located distal to the respiratory outflow tract, to track the timing of the inspiratory and expiratory phases of breathing in awake healthy subjects. Fifteen subjects participated. Breath sounds were recorded using a microphone embedded in a face frame in a fixed location in relation to the nost...
Article
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PURPOSE.Accessibility standards for wheeled mobility devices currently use a 1.5 m turning circle, designed to accommodate manual wheelchairs. Scooters are less manoeuvrable than wheelchairs, so allowing a full turning circle would require too much space. Instead, we propose using a rectangle that provides space for a three-point turn. Here, we det...
Article
We studied an anti-collision power wheelchair's ability to enable safe, independent mobility in nursing home residents with dementia. The device had a contact sensor skirt that compensated for drivers' absent or delayed responses to obstacles. Safety observations were tracked during device use. In six single-subject studies, distances traveled by r...