Balance Mat at Dee Why Beach for World Clinical Exercise Physiology Day 2024

Team Balance had a wonderful time at Dee Why Beach on Monday 23 September 2024 supporting Danny Miller and her crew of exercise physiologists on World Clinical Exercise Physiology Day.

Margaret Metz and I travelled down to Sydney from Port Macquarie to represent Balance Metrix, while Abishek Shrestha, Anu Shrestha and Binod Shrestha travelled up from Canberra to represent Balance Mat Pty Ltd. We were joined by Balance Metrix’s new Biomedical Technology Advocate Catriona Watson-Kennedy, who spent a lot of time with Abishek learning more about how the Balance Mat technology ticks and explaining the balance test results to the members of the public who had their balance assessed.

It was a tremendous opportunity to demonstrate how the Balance Mat can be used outdoors, powered by a laptop with a well charged battery and a good internet connection.

As the photographs below attest, members of the public queued to have their balance tested as part of “The World’s Biggest Healthcheck” at Dee Why. Worldwide, in person and online, this inaugural Day – initiated by renowned Sydney exercise physiologist Danny Miller, Director of Rehab on the Road and Exercise Physiologist of the Year 2024 finalist – involved 1,200 exercise physiologists and their supporters. As a user of the Balance Mat since May 2024, and a pioneer of using it at the beach, Danny graciously included us in this inaugural celebration of her profession.

Monday 23 September 2024 was a hugely successful day – both for Danny as the organiser and for us as a big supporter of exercise physiologists and the exercise-is-medicine message that we’re helping to spread. For me personally, it was a reminder of how lucky I am to be alive and in relatively good health today. As a 67-year-old blood cancer survivor and recipient of triple bypass surgery after a massive heart attack last year, I wish I’d taken my exercise medicine to heart a lot sooner than I have. As an eternal optimist, however, I’m grateful that I’ve lived to tell the tale and that’s why I’m delighted to help spread the word about what exercise physiology can do for people’s health. I truly believe that exercise physiologists are the best!

You can recognise Danny in the photograph below with her exercise physiologist colleagues. She’s standing beside Dr Sophie Scamps MP, her local member, who’s about to cut the ribbon and declare World Clinical Exercise Physiology Day at Dee Why open. Danny’s in the last photograph below with me too. Somehow I managed to end up wearing part of the official ribbon as a sash.

Before the ribbon was even cut, Dr Sophie stood on the mat and watched Abishek test a woman’s balance (see the main photograph at the top of this story). She was fascinated by the way the graphs and scores pick up every movement people make on the Balance Mat and the data is saved for future comparison.

Once the formalities were over and people started having their balance tested on the Balance Mat, Abishek and Catriona explained the results – i.e. whether they had excellent, good or poor balance.

Of the 43 people who stood on the mat for their 20-second tests, three showed they had a definite balance problem requiring medical or allied health intervention, while 24 had excellent balance and 16 had “good” balance that would probably benefit from working with an exercise physiologist.

That equates to roughly one in 15 people who had a definite balance issue, which in turn could equate to the Balance Mat being able to detect the one person in a group of 15 who may be at risk of falling.

As a result of this experience, Balance Metrix is keen to test this hypothesis using our system in tandem with other balance testing and fall prevention modalities and tools.

We are therefore currently on the lookout for allied health or medical professionals to collaborate with. The idea is that we would test the balance of groups of 15 people at your premises – either with you or for you – and prove whether this figure of 1 in 15 holds true.

Of course, the cohort of 43 people at Dee Why was drawn randomly from members of the public who were out walking at the beach on a sunny Monday morning. The data from people in other suburbs without such an amenity and on a different day – say, at a physiotherapy clinic in a more industrial or less physically active area – might have a different story to tell.

If you’re interested in exploring the possibilities, please call me (0457 123 852) or my partner and business manager Margaret (0418 577 746) or email us (ian@balancemetrix.com.au or margaret@balancemetrix.com.au). We’d love to discuss this with you!