Harry W. Tyrer

TigerPlace, A State-Academic-Private Project to Revolutionize Traditional Long-Term Care

ABSTRACT The Aging in Place Project at the University of Missouri (MU) required legislation in 1999 and 2001 to be fully realized. An innovative home health agency was initiated by the Sinclair School of Nursing specifically to help older adults age in place in the environment of their choice. In 2004, an innovative independent living environment was built and is operated by a private long term care company, as a special facility where residents can truly age in place and never fear being moved to a traditional nursing home unless they choose to do so. With care provided by the home care agency with registered nurse care coordination services, residents receive preventative and early illness recognition assistance that have markedly improved their lives. Evaluation of aging in place reveal registered nurse care coordination improves outcomes of cognition, depression, activities of daily living, incontinence, pain, and shortness of breath as well as delaying or preventing nursing home placement. Links with MU students, faculty, and nearly every school or college on campus enrich the lives of the students and residents of the housing environment. Research projects are encouraged and residents who choose to participate are enjoying helping with developing cutting technology to help other seniors age in place.

Smart Carpet: Developing a sensor system to detect falls and summon assistance.

Cognitive deficits experienced by older adults with dementia limit use of wearable devices (necklaces or bracelets) that summon assistance after the older adult falls. To use these wearable devices, older adults must choose to wear them, remember how to use them, and be conscious after falling. Devices such as the Smart Carpet substitute pre-programmed or automatic functions for functions requiring deliberation and decision. After development of a Smart Carpet prototype, 11 volunteers participated in tests to measure sensitivity of sensors embedded in the Smart Carpet. The embedded sensors were not perceptible to the volunteers as they walked across the Smart Carpet and successfully detected gait characteristics. Findings confirmed the feasibility of fall detection. Measurements obtained of gait characteristics will be used in development of more advanced versions of the Smart Carpet.

Early Detection of Health Changes In Older Adults

We have placed a network of sensors in a residential home for the elderly who are aging in place. Restlessness data is displayed as graph of event counts detected by sensors over some time interval, typically a day. This data is related to the actual activities as recorded by the resident. We show two cases of elderly individuals. In both cases the individuals underwent surgery. The restlessness indicators showed changes in patterns that were related to those events. Analyzing the data even at this level we gain increased confidence that technology will be a welcome addition as the population ages and require increasing care.

Inkjet printed arrays of pressure sensors based on all-organic field effect transistors

In this paper we propose totally flexible organic field effect transistors (OFETs) assembled on plastic films as sensors for mechanical variables. First mechanical sensors for pressure and bending detection are presented. A sharp and reversible sensitivity of the output current of the device to an elastic deformation induced by means of a mechanical stimulus on the device channel has been observed and suggested the idea of employing arrays of such sensors for detecting the deformation applied onto a planar surface. Second the possibility of using similar devices for bio- and chemo-detection is described. By exploiting the properties of the basic structure, the device can be combined with any kind of substrate to detect for instance the pressure applied by people walking or standing on a functionalized carpet. This emerging technology seems to be promising for applications in the field of remote and non invasive monitoring of elderly and disabled people.

Multiformat electronic cell sorting system: I. Theoretical considerations

The trajectory of an electrically charged droplet falling in air and electrostatically deflected is analyzed for the influence of droplet size, air frictional drag, and electrical charge. An analytical solution for the trajectory was obtained (assuming a linear velocity component) and programmed into a computer to generate graphs of the variation in trajectory. The experimental work verified that the droplet deflection is proportional to charge and the loss of velocity in the direction of deflection is predicted from the equations obtained here. These studies were used in designing a cell sorting device which places biological cells in defined locations on a microscope slide.

Satellite wide-area-network for telemedicine

Communications for telemedicine requires substantial bandwidths to provide timely transmission of large data sets. To provide rural America with modern telemedicine requires very high bandwidth resources that may take decades to appear. Satellites provide the natural choice for communication between the rural primary care centers and the tertiary care hospital. However, there are problems if TCP, as required for Internet access, is to be the protocol of choice. Analysis of multistation satellite access clearly argues for distributed non-random methods and, hence, for appropriate handling of TCP data streams.

Assessing Physical Performance of Elders Using Fuzzy Logic

This paper describes the application of fuzzy logic to the Short Physical Performance Battery (SPPB) test, a series of timed physical activities that have been created to evaluate, discriminate, and predict physical functional performance for both research and clinical purposes, primarily for physically impaired older adults. The original scoring system of SPPB test uses crisp time boundaries to assign the subject to discrete classes of performance. The crisp (and somewhat arbitrary) nature of the crisp thresholds can easily produce anomalies. Fuzzy Logic theory allows the natural description, in linguistic terms, of input/output relationships rather than relying on precise numerical threshold values. This advantage, dealing with the complicated systems in simple way, is the main reason why fuzzy logic theory is widely applied. In this paper, we offer a new approach for scoring the SPPB test. We demonstrate that in the proposed system, the Fuzzy Short Physical Performance Battery (FSPPB), we can improve the sensitivity and data distribution of the scoring system for the SPPB test. We present the procedures of constructing a fuzzy inference system using fuzzy logic to score the SPPB test and compare the original scoring system with our fuzzy scoring system. As part of a large project in technology for Eldercare, our goal is to accurately measure trends in physical performance of seniors over time.

Arrays of pressure sensors based on organic field effect: A new perspective for non invasive monitoring

In this paper we propose totally flexible organic field effect transistors (OFETs) assembled on plastic films as sensors for mechanical variables. In the first part, mechanical sensors for pressure and bending detection are presented. A sharp and reversible sensitivity of the output current of the device to an elastic deformation induced by means of a mechanical stimulus on the device channel has been observed and suggested the idea of employing arrays of such sensors for detecting the deformation applied onto a planar surface. In the second part, the possibility of using similar devices for bio- and chemo-detection is described. By exploiting the properties of the basic structure, the device can be combined with any kind of substrate to detect for instance the pressure applied by people walking or standing on a functionalized carpet. This emerging technology seems to be promising for applications in the field of remote and non invasive monitoring of elderly and disabled people.

Signal scavenging for passive monitoring in eldercare technology

Signal scavenging is analogous to energy scavenging: seemingly ubiquitous energy in the environs provides the signal for usage as a personnel sensor. Such energy can be used to detect motion, and most importantly falls. Stray signals can be detected in aluminum foil as voltage differences between touched foil (say by hand) compared to that untouched. Spectrum analysis shows the stray electromagnetic noise signal consists substantially of 60 Hz and its harmonics. Also the signal intensity for both touched and untouched monotonically increases with foil area. While personnel monitors find utility in many areas including security, personnel control and activity detection, we believe these putative sensors to be useful in inobtrusive monitoring of elders to provide them with increased independence at a critical time in their lives.

Large file transmissions over high delay data communication channels using tcp

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