Long term remote behavioral monitoring of elderly by using sensors installed in ordinary houses

Abstract

In maintaining the health of elderly people, it can be useful to monitor their health status through their daily routines in their own home. This paper reports on the remote monitoring of the daily routine behavior of elderly patients in their domestic houses. We attempted to monitor the daily behavior of two elderly ladies who live in Mizusawa, Japan. A 74-year-old woman, who lived alone, was monitored for about two years, and another 72-year-old woman who lived alone was monitored for about a year. Several sensors were installed, including infrared sensors to detect human movement, magnetic switches to detect the opening and closing of doors, wattmeters embedded in wall sockets to detect the use of household appliances, a flame detector to detect the use of a cooking stove and a CO, sensor to detect the presence of a subject in a room by monitoring the carbon dioxide expired. An industrial networking system was introduced into each house to combine the sensors. The sensor outputs were recorded on a personal computer located in each house. The data were automatically transferred daily to another site via the Internet using CATV. With the, sensors, a network and data system, the monitoring was fully automatic and did not require the placement of any sensors on the subjects (e.g. electrodes and cuff sensors) or any operations by subjects. Information on several daily behavior patterns, such as the number of door openings, the length of sleep, absences from the house, use of a cooking stove, and time spent watching television were clearly identified either from a single sensor output, or by combining several sensor outputs. Examination of the data allowed some daily behavior, such as worship (in the form of Japanese Buddhism) and the tending of planters to be evaluated. Such monitoring can contribute to the maintenance of health.