Bioengineering Innovations for Personalized Care in Low Back Pain: From Sensors to Smart Therapeutics

Area of Science:

• Biomedical Engineering
• Musculoskeletal Rehabilitation
• Digital Health

Background:

• Low back pain (LBP) is a widespread and debilitating condition with complex contributing factors.
• Current LBP care often uses generalized approaches and subjective assessments, missing individual patient variability.
• Advances in bioengineering offer new ways to objectively monitor LBP-related functional and physiological data.

Purpose of the Study:

• To review current and emerging biosensing technologies for low back pain.
• To highlight the potential of biosensing for objective assessment and personalized rehabilitation.
• To identify requirements for integrating biosensing into clinical practice.

Main Methods:

• Review of recent bioengineering advances in multimodal monitoring.
• Analysis of biosensing applications for neuromuscular activation, movement patterns, and physiological signals.
• Synthesis of data-driven approaches for rehabilitation adjustment.

Main Results:

• Biosensing provides objective correlates of function, movement, and physiological state in LBP.
• These signals can contextualize symptoms, stratify treatment, and monitor recovery trajectories.
• Data-informed analytics enable adaptive rehabilitation and patient feedback loops.

Conclusions:

• Biosensing offers a path toward data-informed, personalized low back pain rehabilitation.
• Key translational requirements include outcome validation, standardization, and clinical workflow integration.
• Bridging engineering innovation with clinical needs is crucial for effective implementation.