Routine analysis of community-dwelling older adults and anomaly detection by using room level location
Sergio Lluva Plaza, José Manuel Villadangos Carrizo, Ana Jiménez-Martín, Antonio Ramón Jiménez, Juan Jesus Garcia Dominguez · 2022 IEEE International Symposium on Medical Measurements and Applications (MeMeA) · 2022
In recent years there has been a considerable interest in monitoring people, especially the elderly, by using different technologies [1], with the aim of improving their quality of life and their independence. In addition, the growing of elderly population [2] implies an increase in medical costs, as they are the age group that requires the highest use of public health services. The detection of changes in the elderly people routines can be an indicator of the onset of physical or cognitive impairment. The early detection of that decline can alert to implement measures to alleviate the deterioration, and as a consequence, this can lead to both improve independent living and reduce health care costs. This work is focused on the analysis of routines of elderly people living in care homes. They are quite routine people since the ordinary activities they perform are supervised by carers. Currently, several volunteers are being monitored to obtain their symbolic location based on BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) technology [3], and through this location the objective is to derive their routines. BLE beacons have been installed in each room of interest within the nursing home, and volunteers wear a smartwatch that stores the MAC (Media Access Control) address and RSSI (Received Signal Strength Indicator) of each beacon it receives. However, due to the lack of data at this stage of the project, we proceed to generate synthetic routines based on real data and carers information, to evaluate the proposed algorithms.