Shaw Gait Assessment Tool

Shaw Gait Assessment:
Putting objective gait analysis at your fingertips!

While working as a physical therapist in the Rehabilitation Outpatient Center at Fletcher Allen, Tony Shaw saw the need for a cost-effective, easy to use gait assessment tool that would offer clinicians immediate quantitative data about their patients' gait. In 2001, while fulfilling Fletcher Allen's mission of integrating research with patient care and education, Tony Shaw PT and Sheila Reid PT MS carried out a study that supported the reliability and validity of this tool, the Shaw Gait Assessment (SGA) in a healthy adult population. (For summary results, please refer to the "Current research" section of this web page.)

The Shaw Gait Assessment Tool (http://www.theralink.com/apps/sga) was developed in 1999, and redesigned in 2003. It is a free, easy to use application and gives therapists real-time objective temporal gait data. Its results are norm-referenced for speed, step length, and step frequency (cadence), dependent upon age and gender. Clinicians will find this a useful biofeedback tool, a means to quantify (and report) the severity of a client's gait deviations, and a way to gauge her or his response to treatment.