Vinformatix helped researchers at LSU’s premier Pennington Biomedical Research Center (PBRC) design an innovative desk-based/IT-enabled stationary bike to answer an important question: Could low-intensity exercise conducted during work hours provide significant health benefits? For this task, our developers had to link together the bike and the computer with software that would provide critical data to support the research trial.
Vinformatix built a custom application to receive and interpret data packets sent from the sensors and chips embedded in the bike hardware. We also coded algorithms to convert the raw data into meaningful information (e.g., time on the Pedal Desk, distance traveled, RPMs, estimated energy expended) that the trial administrators could use for tracking and reporting statistics and trends. In addition, we developed an innovative onscreen dashboard that supported goal-setting by users and could be monitored by a personal trainer. The system was used for a number of trials involving up to 18 Pedal Desk installations to analyze diverse research elements of interest.
The Pedal Desk integration project demonstrates our ability to solve complex hardware/software integration challenges and to successfully collaborate with leading scientific facilities using state-of-the-art R&D protocols. This effort resulted in multiple publications, including one by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for which members of the Vinformatix team were listed as co-authors.