Sixth Vital SignVital Signs
Vital signs are measurements and numbers used by doctors and nurses that show how a person’s body is working. Recently how well someone can do day-to-day activities was recommended as the sixth vital sign to be checked.
Using numbers to see how well someone can do day-to-day activities is important. It helps doctors and nurses understand patients quickly. It can be used to check for health risks. It is easy to check in almost any location. Best of all it only takes a few minutes.
Walking speed is one way to see how well someone can do day-to-day activities. It has been shown to predict changes in health. It has also been shown to predict falls, needing to go to the hospital, and how long someone might live.
Just like how much you move around, walking speed is affected by many things, such as:
- Your emotions and how you feel
- How much you feel like doing things
- How you see the world around you
- How you connect with others
- How you interact with the world
Walking Speed
Right now doctors and nurses are not regularly checking how fast people can walk in most clinics. Because of this, no one knows what a “healthy” walking speed is.
We need to figure out what a “healthy” walking speed is so that doctors can check it like they check blood pressure. Once we figure that out, doctors and nurses can start using it in clinics to see how people are doing.
By checking the walking speed of a big group of people, we can find ways to help everyone get healthier. To do this we need people from all walks of life to help out by using the app. By looking at the results from a lot of people, we can discover new ways to measure people’s health and well-being.
Our Goals
- To get doctors, nurses, and patients to use walking speed as the sixth vital sign so that it is checked on everyone, no matter their gender, race, or how much money they have.
- To take a closer look at the link between walking speed, how much people move around, and health and well-being.
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To create or discover:
- What a “normal” or “healthy” walking speed is for different groups of people based on things like age or sex.
- Real-time maps of walking speed around the world,
- new ways to measure common diseases and symptoms
Join the global study. Improve the health of the world.