Remote Monitoring of Health Status of the Elderly at Home: Preliminary Results of a Five Month Trial
Branko George Celler, W. Earnshaw, E.D. Ilsar · APAMI - HIC 1997: Managing Information for Better Health Outcomes in Australia and the Asia Pacific Region: 11 to 13 August 1997, Asia Pacific Association of Medical Informatics, HISA: Conference Proceedings · 1997
We report on the implementation and recent completion of a pilot project carried out in Sydney, Australia over a period of five months, to monitor functional health status of the elderly at home by continuously recording parameters of daily living sensitive to changes in health. The home monitoring system is based on innovative low cost technology communicating over the mains power lines. A sophisticated information management, communications and analysis system has been designed to automate and support the data collection phase of the project. Participants in the trial were selected from outpatient services of a local aged care hospital. Candidates were assessed using a variety of computerised health assessment tools. These tests were used to reject candidates with dementia or major organic deficits. During the pilot project participants were interviewed weekly using a computerised handheld questionnaire delivery system which implemented the COOP/WONCA assessment charts as well as the Duke 17 item health profile. Participants were also asked to keep a comprehensive daily diary. These composite tools provide the best possible conventional assessment of functional health status and provide quantitative and descriptive data against which the continuously monitored variables can be compared and analysed. Five participants were selected and four were monitored continuously for a period of five months. Although the sample size was small, preliminary analysis of the data confirms the technical feasibility of the monitoring and evaluation protocols, and a qualitative analysis of the data demonstrates that a small number of simple variables can provide useful indices of functional health status. The temporal relationships between events are presently being analysed using a variety of statistical, parametric and machine learning methods. The monitoring technology developed and the computer based questionnaires are both finding applications in other areas of home monitoring, the assessment of health service utilisation and the assessment of client satisfaction with the services provided