What We are Doing

Joint protection is a traditional component of hand arthritis management which can result in temporary relief of pain and reduce the progression of arthritis and deformity through reduced loading over the longer term. Collaborating with Roth | McFarlane Hand and Upper Limb Centre (HULC), FHS MSK-IF aims to refine the joint protection program for hands and shoulder arthritis patients with accessible modules that well-accommodates the target users.

An upper extremity fragility fracture indicates elevated risk of future fracture and begins the trajectory for a diagnosis of osteoporosis (OP). With consultation from various healthcare professionals, FHS MSK-IF aims to refine the virtual fragility fracture bone health program developed at the Hand and Upper Limb Centre with the goal of making it suitable for scale-up to middle-aged adults with upper extremity or spinal fragility fractures. The program focuses on improving bone health through changes in diet, exercise, safe movement, medication, and falls prevention strategies.

Knee osteoarthritis (OA) limits one's physical activities and increases the risk of vascular events and death. Knee braces have the potential to help people with this condition, however, their effectiveness remains unclear. As part of the randomized clinical trial study funded by the Arthritis Society and Western's Bone and Joint Institute, this project aims to identify the knee braces' effectiveness by accurately monitoring their active wear time (adherence) with custom wearable devices assembled by FHS MSK-IF.

Several applications exist to capture characteristics of pain data, but a recent systematic review highlighted considerable heterogeneity across content. The purpose of this project is to enhance a patient-facing form to enable an extended dataset for several Western-associated musculoskeletal registries (e.g., SPINA, HULC, FKSMC) to collect a comprehensive range of pain assessment data to enable an in-depth understanding of the characteristics of pain for research.

One of the standards of care for treating upper limb injuries is to prescribe a removable splint or orthosis, which helps fractures and other soft tissues to heal and decrease pain and inflammation. A multidisciplinary team is working with clinical partners at the Hand and Upper Limb Centre (located at St. Joseph’s Health Care), patient partners, and the FHS MSK-IF to develop a wearable device that measures splint adherence through temperature and surface electromyography (sEMG) to understand the relationship between splinting (immobilization) and tissue healing and other important outcomes.

This project aims to develop an intuitive, web-based application to classify injured workers into clinically meaningful musculoskeletal pain subtypes, building on prior machine learning research conducted with Canadian Veterans and acutely injured workers. The tool will streamline clinical assessments, enabling more personalized and efficient care decisions.

Researchers have developed the CTS-DO to improve diagnosis of carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS), an assessment with strong test-retest reliability and content validity. In virtual testing, the CTS-DO showed high diagnostic accuracy of 96% specificity and 83% sensitivity. This project aims to refine and enhance CTS-DO accessibility by developing a web survey application with CTS-DO integration.

HULC Motion shirts, developed at the Hand and Upper Limb Centre, are sensor-equipped compression garments designed for untethered motion tracking over extended periods. They have been validated in several developmental studies, including post-surgical monitoring and comparisons with video-based motion analysis. This project seeks MSK-IF support to improve data extraction, develop a clinically meaningful interface, and enhance the shirt design for better usability in clinical settings.

Pain frequency and pain interference are key indicators for interpreting chronic pain recovery, and several clinicians and researchers have shown interest in developing a tool that incorporates both of these aspects during the pain assessment. MSI allows respondents to indicate how often they experience each symptom, and how much each one interferes with their daily routine. FHS MSK-IF developed a MSI web application with enhanced user interface and workflow, allowing the users to easily generate a report to identify patients' conditions in a quick, holistic way.