A computer system to monitor older adults at home: Preliminary results

Ambient Sensors for Elderly Care and Independent Living: A Survey

Elderly care at home is a matter of great concern if the elderly live alone, since unforeseen circumstances might occur that affect their well-being. Technologies that assist the elderly in independent living are essential for enhancing care in a cost-effective and reliable manner. Elderly care applications often demand real-time observation of the environment and the resident’s activities using an event-driven system. As an emerging area of research and development, it is necessary to explore the approaches of the elderly care system in the literature to identify current practices for future research directions. Therefore, this work is aimed at a comprehensive survey of non-wearable (i.e., ambient) sensors for various elderly care systems. This research work is an effort to obtain insight into different types of ambient-sensor-based elderly monitoring technologies in the home. With the aim of adopting these technologies, research works, and their outcomes are reported. Publications have been included in this survey if they reported mostly ambient sensor-based monitoring technologies that detect elderly events (e.g., activities of daily living and falls) with the aim of facilitating independent living. Mostly, different types of non-contact sensor technologies were identified, such as motion, pressure, video, object contact, and sound sensors. Besides, multicomponent technologies (i.e., combinations of ambient sensors with wearable sensors) and smart technologies were identified. In addition to room-mounted ambient sensors, sensors in robot-based elderly care works are also reported. Research that is related to the use of elderly behavior monitoring technologies is widespread, but it is still in its infancy and consists mostly of limited-scale studies. Elderly behavior monitoring technology is a promising field, especially for long-term elderly care. However, monitoring technologies should be taken to the next level with more detailed studies that evaluate and demonstrate their potential to contribute to prolonging the independent living of elderly people.

Is Technology Present in Frailty? Technology a Back-up Tool for Dealing with Frailty in the Elderly: A Systematic Review

This study analyzes the technologies used in dealing with frailty within the following areas: prevention, care, diagnosis and treatment. The aim of this paper is, on the one hand, to analyze the extent to which technology is present in terms of its relationship with frailty and what technological resources are used to treat it. Its other purpose is to define new challenges and contributions made by physiotherapy using technology. Eighty documents related to research, validation and/or the ascertaining of different types of hardware, software or both were reviewed in prominent areas. The authors used the following scales: in the area of diagnosis, Fried's phenotype model of frailty and a model based on trials for the design of devices. The technologies developed that are based on these models accounted for 55% and 45% of cases respectively. In the area of prevention, the results proved similar regarding the use of wireless sensors with cameras (35.71%), and Kinect™ sensors (28.57%) to analyze movements and postures that indicate a risk of falling. In the area of care, results were found referring to the use of different motion, physiological and environmental wireless sensors (46,15%), i.e. so-called smart homes. In the area of treatment, the results show with a percentage of 37.5% that the Nintendo® Wii™ console is the most used tool for treating frailty in elderly persons. Further work needs to be carried out to reduce the gap existing between technology, frail elderly persons, healthcare professionals and carers to bring together the different views about technology. This need raises the challenge of developing and implementing technology in physiotherapy via serious games that may via play and connectivity help to improve the functional capacity, general health and quality of life of frail individuals.

Literature review on monitoring technologies and their outcomes in independently living elderly people

PURPOSE

To obtain insight into what kind of monitoring technologies exist to monitor activity in-home, what the characteristics and aims of applying these technologies are, what kind of research has been conducted on their effects and what kind of outcomes are reported.

METHODS

A systematic document search was conducted within the scientific databases Pubmed, Embase, Cochrane, PsycINFO and Cinahl, complemented by Google Scholar. Documents were included in this review if they reported on monitoring technologies that detect activities of daily living (ADL) or significant events, e.g. falls, of elderly people in-home, with the aim of prolonging independent living.

RESULTS

Five main types of monitoring technologies were identified: PIR motion sensors, body-worn sensors, pressure sensors, video monitoring and sound recognition. In addition, multicomponent technologies and smart home technologies were identified. Research into the use of monitoring technologies is widespread, but in its infancy, consisting mainly of small-scale studies and including few longitudinal studies.

CONCLUSIONS

Monitoring technology is a promising field, with applications to the long-term care of elderly persons. However, monitoring technologies have to be brought to the next level, with longitudinal studies that evaluate their (cost-) effectiveness to demonstrate the potential to prolong independent living of elderly persons. [Box: see text].

Recommendations for ICT use in Alzheimer's disease assessment: Monaco CTAD Expert Meeting

Alzheimer disease (AD) and other related dementia represent a major challenge for health care systems within the aging population. It is therefore important to develop better instruments for assessing disease severity and disease progression to optimize patient's care and support to care providers, and also provide better tools for clinical research. In this area, Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are of particular interest. Such techniques enable accurate and standardized assessments of patients' performance and actions in real time and real life situations. The aim of this article is to provide basic recommendation concerning the development and the use of ICT for Alzheimer's disease and related disorders. During he ICT and Mental Health workshop (CTAD meeting held in Monaco on the 30th October 2012) an expert panel was set up to prepare the first recommendations for the use of ICT in dementia research. The expert panel included geriatrician, epidemiologist, neurologist, psychiatrist, psychologist, ICT engineers, representatives from the industry and patient association. The recommendations are divided into three sections corresponding to 1/ the clinical targets of interest for the use of ICT, 2/ the conditions, the type of sensors and the outputs (scores) that could be used and obtained, 3/ finally the last section concerns specifically the use of ICT within clinical trials.