Improving movement analysis practices across Quebec
to facilitate families’ access to services
The Movement Lab project aims to improve movement analysis practices across Quebec. Approved by the Executive Committee as a collaborative project within the Initiative in 2021, it brings together not only the four MUSCO partner establishments, but also the Centre interdisciplinaire de recherche en réadaptation et intégration sociale (CIRRIS) and Université Laval. It is based on a multi-centric research approach and harmonization of practices, with two main interlocking components:
- Component 1 – an inter-center tie-in to strengthen harmonization of practices in clinical gait analysis (CGA) to optimize measurement of care options and their effects, and improve understanding of locomotor disorders;
- Component 2 – a foot model to democratize multi-segment foot model (MSFM) technologies and improve knowledge sharing and reliability.
Building on a project to integrate a movement model for foot assessment in Component 2), the aim is to extend the harmonization approaches initiated in Component 1), notably to other populations with pathological foot deformities – Charcot-Marie-Tooth, clubfoot – as well as patients undergoing radicellectomy. In the short term, the idea is “to be able to demonstrate the feasibility of multicenter studies in order to generate larger samples and produce research results with greater impact”, explains Louis Nicolas Veilleux, coordinator and principal investigator at the Center for Movement Analysis, Shriners Hospitals for Children – Canada and co-sponsor of this project as part of MUSCO.
“The development of the open-access multi-segment model has produced good preliminary results,” says Philippe Dixon, the second MUSCO project co-sponsor and assistant professor at the Université de Montréal’s Faculty of Medicine – School of Kinesiology and Physical Activity Sciences. “Elodie Drew, a master’s student, will present the results at a European congress this fall (European society for movement analysis in adults and children). She will also be doing an internship at Oxford University and with the Vicon company to continue improving the work.”
According to Louis-Nicolas, the special feature of the project is that it encompasses the three pediatric movement analysis centers in the province of Quebec, i.e. the Shriners Hospital for Children – Canada, the Centre de réadaptation Marie Enfant and CIRRIS: “This is the first collaboration between the three sites and, as a result, most of the work carried out to date has concerned the legal and technical aspects of the projects. The inter-establishment agreement has now been obtained for all the centers involved, and athe project was accepted by the research ethics committee. So there are just a few details left to iron out before we can launch the project.”
In concrete terms for families, one of the objectives of the project for Louis-Nicolas is to facilitate access to a service that is known to improve the care of cerebral palsy patients in particular. Where, for example, patients followed in Quebec City are sent to the Shriners in Montreal, direct access to a gait analysis in Quebec City itself would greatly improve their quality of life by avoiding the burden of additional travel.
The next step in this vast inter-center collaboration? Recruiting the resources needed for deployment and starting data collection. The launch of the project is already promising, and we wish the teams every success!
Photo credit: Shriners Hospital for Children – Canada