Instrumenting traditional approaches to physical assessment

Wearable technologies (wearables) have emerged as useful tools in the assessment of individuals within controlled settings. By utilizing wearables during assessments, objective digital data can be used to better inform clinical decisions. Of recent pragmatic interest has been the emergence of inertial sensor-based wearables (e.g., accelerometers, gyroscopes) that can provide high resolution temporal, spatial, and frequency-based outcomes that could be used to better quantify balance, gait, and other physical functioning tasks. This chapter explores the background to the instrumentation of physical functioning tasks, with the fundamentals required to capture and analysis inertial signals.