Wellness Assessment of Alzheimer's Patients in an Instrumented Health-Care Facility

Edge-Based Transfer Learning for Classroom Occupancy Detection in a Smart Campus Context

Studies and systems that are aimed at the identification of the presence of people within an indoor environment and the monitoring of their activities and flows have been receiving more attention in recent years, specifically since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper proposes an approach for people counting that is based on the use of cameras and Raspberry Pi platforms, together with an edge-based transfer learning framework that is enriched with specific image processing strategies, with the aim of this approach being adopted in different indoor environments without the need for tailored training phases. The system was deployed on a university campus, which was chosen as the case study. The proposed system was able to work in classrooms with different characteristics. This paper reports a proposed architecture that could make the system scalable and privacy compliant and the evaluation tests that were conducted in different types of classrooms, which demonstrate the feasibility of this approach. Overall, the system was able to count the number of people in classrooms with a maximum mean absolute error of 1.23.

Indoor Location Data for Tracking Human Behaviours: A Scoping Review

Real-time location systems (RTLS) record locations of individuals over time and are valuable sources of spatiotemporal data that can be used to understand patterns of human behaviour. Location data are used in a wide breadth of applications, from locating individuals to contact tracing or monitoring health markers. To support the use of RTLS in many applications, the varied ways location data can describe patterns of human behaviour should be examined. The objective of this review is to investigate behaviours described using indoor location data, and particularly the types of features extracted from RTLS data to describe behaviours. Four major applications were identified: health status monitoring, consumer behaviours, developmental behaviour, and workplace safety/efficiency. RTLS data features used to analyse behaviours were categorized into four groups: dwell time, activity level, trajectory, and proximity. Passive sensors that provide non-uniform data streams and features with lower complexity were common. Few studies analysed social behaviours between more than one individual at once. Less than half the health status monitoring studies examined clinical validity against gold-standard measures. Overall, spatiotemporal data from RTLS technologies are useful to identify behaviour patterns, provided there is sufficient richness in location data, the behaviour of interest is well-characterized, and a detailed feature analysis is undertaken.

Wearable Sensors and Systems in the IoT

Wearable smart devices are widely used to determine various physico-mechanical parameters at chosen intervals. The proliferation of such devices has been driven by the acceptance of enhanced technology in society [...].

High-Efficiency Multi-Sensor System for Chair Usage Detection

Recognizing Activities of Daily Living (ADL) or detecting falls in domestic environments require monitoring the movements and positions of a person. Several approaches use wearable devices or cameras, especially for fall detection, but they are considered intrusive by many users. To support such activities in an unobtrusive way, ambient-based solutions are available (e.g., based on PIRs, contact sensors, etc.). In this paper, we focus on the problem of sitting detection exploiting only unobtrusive sensors. In fact, sitting detection can be useful to understand the position of the user in many activities of the daily routines. While identifying sitting/lying on a sofa or bed is reasonably simple with pressure sensors, detecting whether a person is sitting on a chair is an open problem due to the natural chair position volatility. This paper proposes a reliable, not invasive and energetically sustainable system that can be used on chairs already present in the home. In particular, the proposed solution fuses the data of an accelerometer and a capacitive coupling sensor to understand if a person is sitting or not, discriminating the case of objects left on the chair. The results obtained in a real environment setting show an accuracy of 98.6% and a precision of 95%.

Smart aging monitoring and early dementia recognition (SAMEDR): uncovering the hidden wellness parameter for preventive well-being monitoring to categorize cognitive impairment and dementia in community-dwelling elderly subjects through AI

Reasoning weakening because of dementia degrades the performance in activities of daily living (ADL). Present research work distinguishes care needs, dangers and monitors the effect of dementia on an individual. This research contrasts in ADL design execution between dementia-affected people and other healthy elderly with heterogeneous sensors. More than 300,000 sensors associated activation data were collected from the dementia patients and healthy controls with wellness sensors networks. Generated ADLs were envisioned and understood through the activity maps, diversity and other wellness parameters to categorize wellness healthy, and dementia affected the elderly. Diversity was significant between diseased and healthy subjects. Heterogeneous unobtrusive sensor data evaluate behavioral patterns associated with ADL, helpful to reveal the impact of cognitive degradation, to measure ADL variation throughout dementia. The primary focus of activity recognition in the current research is to transfer dementia subject occupied homes models to generalized age-matched healthy subject data models to utilize new services, label classified datasets and produce limited datasets due to less training. Current research proposes a novel Smart Aging Monitoring and Early Dementia Recognition system that provides the exchange of data models between dementia subject occupied homes (DSOH) to healthy subject occupied homes (HSOH) in a move to resolve the deficiency of training data. At that point, the key attributes are mapped onto each other utilizing a sensor data fusion that assures to retain the diversities between various HSOH & DSOH by diminishing the divergence between them. Moreover, additional tests have been conducted to quantify the excellence of the offered framework: primary, in contradiction of the precision of feature mapping techniques; next, computing the merit of categorizing data at DSOH; and, the last, the aptitude of the projected structure to function thriving due to noise data. The outcomes show encouraging pointers and highlight the boundaries of the projected approach.

Understanding Social Behaviour in a Health-Care Facility from Localization Data: A Case Study

The most frequent form of dementia is Alzheimer's Disease (AD), a severe progressive neurological pathology in which the main cognitive functions of an individual are compromised. Recent studies have found that loneliness and living in isolation are likely to cause an acceleration in the cognitive decline associated with AD. Therefore, understanding social behaviours of AD patients is crucial to promote sociability, thus delaying cognitive decline, preserving independence, and providing a good quality of life. In this work, we analyze the localization data of AD patients living in assisted care homes to gather insights about the social dynamics among them. We use localization data collected by a system based on iBeacon technology comprising two components: a network of antennas scattered throughout the facility and a Bluetooth bracelet worn by the patients. We redefine the Relational Index to capture wandering and casual encounters, these being common phenomena among AD patients, and use the notions of Relational and Popularity Indexes to model, visualize and understand the social behaviour of AD patients. We leverage the data analyses to build predictive tools and applications to enhance social activities scheduling and sociability monitoring and promotion, with the ultimate aim of providing patients with a better quality of life. Predictions and visualizations act as a support for caregivers in activity planning to maximize treatment effects and, hence, slow down the progression of Alzheimer's disease. We present the Community Behaviour Prediction Table (CBPT), a tool to visualize the estimated values of sociability among patients and popularity of places within a facility. Finally, we show the potential of the system by analyzing the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) lockdown time-frame between February and June 2020 in a specific facility. Through the use of the indexes, we evaluate the effects of the pandemic on the behaviour of the residents, observing no particular impact on sociability even though social distancing was put in place.

Factors Affecting the Implementation, Use, and Adoption of Real-Time Location System Technology for Persons Living With Cognitive Disabilities in Long-term Care Homes: Systematic Review

BACKGROUND

As the aging population continues to grow, the number of adults living with dementia or other cognitive disabilities in residential long-term care homes is expected to increase. Technologies such as real-time locating systems (RTLS) are being investigated for their potential to improve the health and safety of residents and the quality of care and efficiency of long-term care facilities.

OBJECTIVE

The aim of this study is to identify factors that affect the implementation, adoption, and use of RTLS for use with persons living with dementia or other cognitive disabilities in long-term care homes.

METHODS

We conducted a systematic review of the peer-reviewed English language literature indexed in MEDLINE, Embase, PsycINFO, and CINAHL from inception up to and including May 5, 2020. Search strategies included keywords and subject headings related to cognitive disability, residential long-term care settings, and RTLS. Study characteristics, methodologies, and data were extracted and analyzed using constant comparative techniques.

RESULTS

A total of 12 publications were included in the review. Most studies were conducted in the Netherlands (7/12, 58%) and used a descriptive qualitative study design. We identified 3 themes from our analysis of the studies: barriers to implementation, enablers of implementation, and agency and context. Barriers to implementation included lack of motivation for engagement; technology ecosystem and infrastructure challenges; and myths, stories, and shared understanding. Enablers of implementation included understanding local workflows, policies, and technologies; usability and user-centered design; communication with providers; and establishing policies, frameworks, governance, and evaluation. Agency and context were examined from the perspective of residents, family members, care providers, and the long-term care organizations.

CONCLUSIONS

There is a striking lack of evidence to justify the use of RTLS to improve the lives of residents and care providers in long-term care settings. More research related to RTLS use with cognitively impaired residents is required; this research should include longitudinal evaluation of end-to-end implementations that are developed using scientific theory and rigorous analysis of the functionality, efficiency, and effectiveness of these systems. Future research is required on the ethics of monitoring residents using RTLS and its impact on the privacy of residents and health care workers.

Alzheimer’s Garden: Understanding Social Behaviors of Patients with Dementia to Improve Their Quality of Life

This paper aims at understanding the social behavior of people with dementia through the use of technology, specifically by analyzing localization data of patients of an Alzheimer’s assisted care home in Italy. The analysis will allow to promote social relations by enhancing the facility’s spaces and activities, with the ultimate objective of improving residents’ quality of life. To assess social wellness and evaluate the effectiveness of the village areas and activities, this work introduces measures of sociability for both residents and places. Our data analysis is based on classical statistical methods and innovative machine learning techniques. First, we analyze the correlation between relational indicators and factors such as the outdoor temperature and the patients’ movements inside the facility. Then, we use statistical and accessibility analyses to determine the spaces residents appreciate the most and those in need of enhancements. We observe that patients’ sociability is strongly related to the considered factors. From our analysis, outdoor areas result less frequented and need spatial redesign to promote accessibility and attendance among patients. The data awareness obtained from our analysis will also be of great help to caregivers, doctors, and psychologists to enhance assisted care home social activities, adjust patient-specific treatments, and deepen the comprehension of the disease.