There are reasons people invented shoes, and quite a long time ago at that. Indeed, evidence for soled shoes goes back 40,000 years, with reasonable indications that people were using some protective footwear an additional 10,000 years earlier than that. Shoes protect our feet, offer support, and increase the distance people can walk comfortably.
Happily, we have more choices today than our cave-dwelling ancestors. The potent combination of materials science with high-tech gait research technology leads to shoes that reduce discomfort and help prevent injuries. To see the best results, though, you need good data. That leads us naturally to the question of how you get it.
Podiatry clinics and hospital research labs already know that acquiring the right footwear and podiatric gait analysis data is easier said than done. You need to ensure it's clean, repeatable, and relevant to the objectives, but that's easier said than done. Many systems are inadequate or, while good, don't go deep enough.
The good news is that there's an easy, out-of-the-box, cutting-edge answer for orthotists, pedorthists, and podiatrists. Before we discuss that, though, it's important to take a closer look at how injury and gait are related and how footwear can pose a solution. Keep reading.
A link exists between injury and gait, and if not careful, this can become a powerful feedback loop in some people. Injury can cause an abnormal gait because a person is trying to compensate for what hurts. Still, an abnormal gait can also cause injury through overuse or a lack of balance that puts too much stress on bodily structures.
Biomechanics research aims to understand how these two are related and to act through prevention and treatment, including proper footwear, the design of which we will examine next.
Footwear is critical to injury prevention. As time goes on, the body's structures break down, especially in highly load-bearing areas such as the feet. To design proper footwear, you need the right information to direct your course of action. That goes for both prototyping and testing and, more accurately, the iterative relationship that exists between the two.
To build a solid foundation of what's needed in a shoe, you first need to gather a lot of gait data. This information includes details such as:
By gathering such information, you can form conclusions about normal walking patterns and those in which gait pathologies exist. This data also helps you draw broad conclusions about the issues that affect different age groups, genders, and diseases, among other determining factors. This is critical for preventing injuries and helping wearers heal from them.
Several technologies exist to help you gather this data. These include video cameras, electromyographic analyses, force plate analyses, and so on. But such methods don't necessarily go far enough.
Gait data is the missing link.
From sports medicine researchers to podiatrists, it's critical to understand the link between good technology and exceptional footwear design. Only a gait-driven shoe will increase performance, reduce injury risk, and improve overall stance all at once.
Unfortunately, though, gathering gait data – whether for footwear design, diagnosing pathologies, or anything else – does come with its challenges. These include:
On the opposite side of the spectrum sit your goals. Your gait analysis system should help you:
The good news is that you can neatly circumvent the challenges and achieve the goals simultaneously with the right system.
Whether we're talking about injury prevention in elite athletes, hobby runners, or the general population, shoes play a pivotal role. From people who suffer from diabetic foot troubles to those who are constantly trying to beat their last record, footwear is integral to the support and protection of feet.
Thus, so is gait data, which means you need a method of capturing the most viable, accurate, and meaningful information from each test run (literally). Only with complete and validated data can you be sure you are doing your best for your patients.
The question becomes, where do you get such data?
And the answer is XSENSOR.
If you're ready for a gait data system that's simple to set up and even simpler to use, then it's time to explore XSENSOR's clinical gait analysis insoles. They make it extremely easy to see what's happening between the sole and the inside of the shoe, which is normally invisible—certainly to the human eye or to video cameras.
With wireless insoles, that problem is no longer present. Our insoles are easy to insert, virtually undetectable, and available in a wide range of sizes. That means you can treat any patient at any time without a lot of recalibrations or futzing with equipment. All you have to do is slip in the insoles, turn on the system, and get ready to collect the valuable data you've been looking for.
Our software then turns that information into visualizations and rich datasets that you can use to design the best possible footwear for injury prevention. It's a no-brainer, and we would love to tell you more about it. Feel free to book your demo now.