Arni Ariani

Simulated Unobtrusive Falls Detection With Multiple Persons

One serious issue related to falls among the elderly living at home or in a residential care facility is the “long lie” scenario, which involves being unable to get up from the floor after a fall for 60 min or more. This research uses a simulated environment to investigate the potential effectiveness of using wireless ambient sensors (dual-technology (microwave/infrared) motion detectors and pressure mats) to track the movement of multiple persons and to unobtrusively detect falls when they occur, therefore reducing the rate of occurrence of “long lie” scenarios. A path-finding algorithm (A*) is used to simulate the movement of one or more persons through the residential area. For analysis, the sensor network is represented as an undirected graph, where nodes in the graph represent sensors, and edges between nodes in the graph imply that these sensors share an overlapping physical region in their area of sensitivity. A second undirected graph is used to represent the physical adjacency of the sensors (even where they do not overlap in their monitored regions). These graphical representations enable the tracking of multiple subjects/groups within the environment, by analyzing the sensor activation and adjacency profiles, hence allowing individuals/groups to be isolated when multiple persons are present, and subsequently monitoring falls events. A falls algorithm, based on a heuristic decision tree classifier model, was tested on 15 scenarios, each including one or more persons; three scenarios of activity of daily living, and 12 different types of falls (four types of fall, each with three postfall scenarios). The sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy of the falls algorithm are 100.00%, 77.14%, and 89.33%, respectively.

Software simulation of unobtrusive falls detection at night-time using passive infrared and pressure mat sensors

Falls and their related injuries are a major challenge facing elderly people. One serious issue related to falls among the elderly living at home is the ‘long-lie’ scenario, which is the inability to get up from the floor after a fall, followed by lying on the floor for 60 minutes, or more. Several studies of accelerometer and gyroscope-based wearable falls detection devices have been cited in the literature. However, when the subject moves around at night-time, such as making a trip from the bedroom to the toilet, it is unlikely that they will remember or even feel an inclination to wear such a device. This research will investigate the potential usefulness of an unobtrusive fall detection system, based on the use of passive infrared sensors (PIRs) and pressure mats (PMs), that will detect falls automatically by recognizing unusual activity sequences in the home environment; hence, decreasing the number of subjects suffering the ‘long-lie’ scenario after a fall. A Java-based wireless sensor network (WSN) simulation was developed. This simulation reads the room coordinates from a residential map, a path-finding algorithm (A*) simulates the subjects movement through the residential environment, and PIR and PM sensors respond in a binary manner to the subjects movement. The falls algorithm was tested for four scenarios; one scenario including activities of daily living (ADL) and three scenarios simulating falls. The simulator generates movements for ten elderly people (5 female and 5 male; age: 50–70 years; body mass index: 25.85–26.77 kg/m2). A decision tree based heuristic classification model is used to analyze the data and differentiate falls events from normal activities. The sensitivity, specificity and accuracy of the algorithm are 100%, 66.67% and 90.91%, respectively, across all tested scenarios.

Emerging ICT implementation issues in aged care.

BACKGROUND Demand for aged care services continues to soar as a result of an aging population. This increasing demand requires more residential aged care facilities and healthcare workforce. One recommended solution is to keep older people in their homes longer and support their independent life through the use of information and communication technologies (ICT). However, the aged care sector is still in the early stages of adopting ICT. OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to identify the key issues that affect the adoption of ICT in the aged care sector. METHODS A systematic literature review was undertaken and involved four steps. The first two steps aimed to identify and select relevant articles. Data was then extracted from the selected articles and identified issues were analyzed and grouped into three major categories. RESULTS ICT adoption issues were categorized into different perspectives, representing older people, health professionals and management. Our findings showed that all three groups were mostly concerned with issues around behavior, cost and lack of technical skills. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS Findings reported in this study will help decision makers at aged care settings to systematically understand issues related to ICT adoption and thus proactively introduce interventions to improve use of ICT in this sector. On the basis of our findings, we suggest future research focus on the examination of aged care workflow and assessment of return on ICT investment.

Design of an unobtrusive system for fall detection in multiple occupancy residences

A small trial was conducted to examine the feasibility of detecting falls using a combination of ambient passive infrared (PIR) and pressure mat (PM) sensors in a home with multiple occupants. The key tracking method made use of graph theoretical concepts to track each individual in the residence and to monitor them independently for falls. The proposed algorithm attempts to recognize falls where the subject experiences a hard fall on an indoor surface that leads to loss of consciousness or an inability to get up from the floor without assistance, due to severe injuries. The sensitivity, specificity and accuracy of the algorithm in detecting falls are 85.00%, 80.00% and 82.86%, respectively.

Simulation of a smart home environment

This research will focus on options to reduce the complexity and cost of designing and evaluating smart homes by developing a residential environment and ambient sensor simulator that can respond to different movements of people. The map editor is used to create and save different types of floor plans, including existing furniture or appliances and to add ambient sensors in a 2-dimensional (2D) model. The WSN simulator provides the ability to simulate the residents movement through the residential environment, as defined by the 2D model, and monitor how ambient sensors respond in a binary (on/off) manner to the residents movement.

Innovative Healthcare Applications of ICT for Developing Countries

Globally, there is a rising demand for an effective, efficient, and trustworthy healthcare delivery system, particularly in developing countries with large populations and significant remote or inaccessible areas. The use of ICT to deliver healthcare services, in particular eHealth and its sub-category m-health, offers an enormous potential to reduce costs, advance health information exchange, and improve healthcare access, as well as public and personalized medicine. However, developing countries also face unique challenges to optimally develop and apply ICT in healthcare sector, including financial feasibility, infrastructure, access, equity, and quality; knowledge and research evidence; leadership and governance; security and interoperability; and social and technological environments. We review innovative ICT healthcare applications and different types of implementation challenges in developing countries and provide specific application examples in both developed and developing countries. Finally, we propose a comprehensive design model for ICT applications in developing countries as an aid for: (1) disease management and surveillance, (2) treatment planning and monitoring, and (3) quality control of healthcare. The integrated system consisted of eight key elements: patients, healthcare providers, data and data analytics, regulators, researchers, healthcare payers, telecommunication providers, and hardware and software vendors. It is our hope that this proposed model will serve as a basis for the implementation of ICT in healthcare sector in developing countries.