Deriving stair-climbing performance outcome measures using the smartphone barometer: Results of an algorithm development study

As we seek to gain richer insights to understand intervention effects, and increasingly decentralise aspects of clinical trials to simplify participation, there is a growing interest in leveraging wearables and sensors to generate novel and informative clinical outcome measures for at-home assessment. The sensors embedded within smartphone technology provide one approach to capture of this data, and may be particularly useful when patients are already using mobile devices for at-home capture of other clinical trials data, such as patient-reported outcomes. We describe the results of an initial algorithm development study to determine whether the atmospheric pressure data provided by an onboard smartphone sensor is sufficiently informative to enable detection of a small height gain, such as that achieved during a short stair climb performance test. We were able to sufficiently distinguish height changes of 0.6 m in indoor conditions, representing around 4 stairs on an average staircase. This suggests that the smartphone barometer may indeed be suitable for inclusion within future work developing a stair-climbing performance outcome test instrumented using a mobile application.