Quantifying human movement across the continuum of care: From lab to clinic to community

•Translation of motion analysis data from the lab to clinical practice remains elusive.•Portable accelerometers can measure elements of human movement outside of the laboratory.•Center of mass acceleration can infer information about force generation during walking.•Step activity determined from accelerometers is related to community participation.•We need to determine if these data can guide clinical decision making and treatment design.

The ability to precisely quantify human movement within the laboratory setting provides researchers with data that comprehensively describe movement dysfunction in clinical cohorts. Furthermore, these data can be effectively utilized to identify potential underlying mechanisms as targets for therapeutic intervention. Although the utility of these methodologies is evidenced by the number of laboratories incorporating these techniques to understand clinical pathologies, the direct translation to clinical practice remains elusive and there exists an information gap between researchers studying these populations and the clinicians developing treatment for the individuals.MethodRecent technological advancements allow researchers and their clinician counterparts to measure certain elements of human movement outside of the laboratory. Specifically, the use of portable accelerometers allows for calculation of acceleration of the center of mass (COMa) during walking. COMa can be then be used to infer information about force generation by the individual during walking. This information may then be used by researchers to integrate with laboratory based results as well as by clinicians to partner with clinical findings, thus guiding clinical decision making as well as treatment design. The extent to which these types of measurement devices can be used to generate specific data describing human movement away from the lab is in the early stages of investigation, however, the potential for their use is something that could help advance research and patient care in the future.