DIALECT has three scientific workpackages: Model, Measure and Make. WP “Measure” aims to establish state-of-the-art personalised physical activity and adherence profiles, develop a new smart wearable monitoring system for cumulative plantar tissue stress measurements, and develop an in-shoe shear load measuring system
Three doctoral candidates will work in WP “Measure”. Physical activity and adherence profiling is new to the field of diabetic foot disease and important given the role of activity and treatment adherence in clinical outcomes. One doctoral candidate will use the database of the ongoing “Maastricht study” (led by the University of Maastricht) to use machine learning for profiling of people with different foot ulcer risk on quality and quantity of daily physical activity and assess the association with foot ulcer risk.
A second doctoral candidate will develop and test smart wearable tools to measure cumulative tissue stress, by combining measurements from in-shoe plantar pressure distribution, footwear adherence, and quality and quantity of physical activity in daily life over prolonged periods of time in high-risk patients. The third doctoral candidate in this WP will develop a shear force measuring sensor system for inside the shoe, following an iterative engineering design process.
Dr. Axel Kalpen from novel gmbh is work package leader for WP4.