Abstract

The home is a key environment for geriatric care. Research has demonstrated patients discharged to their homes are at a high risk of readmission of transitioning to homecare. The ability for care providers to predict and mitigate risk is limited in this environment. Significant observational requirements hinder continued diagnosis which limits timely interventions before a readmission event. Technology is used to resolve this issue and provide enhanced risk assessments by gathering data, however these technologies present a wide variety of challenges including barriers to use and ethical considerations which hinder an effective solution. This paper seeks to examine the necessary observations homecare providers require to form effective risk assessments and interventions in the home. This is achieved by remote monitoring through Bluetooth low energy (BLE) sensors for the common causes of hospital readmissions including observed difficulties in activities of daily living (ADL), heart rate fluctuations and falls. Risk is assessed by examining these factors as events to deduce behaviour or apparent reduction in capacity to function in daily life. Results obtained when using BLE sensors, heart rate monitors and fall detectors show it is possible to observe and record events of interest to health care providers in the provision of geriatric homecare. Patterns within sensor data could be used in the home environment to form an effective patient risk analysis given remote monitoring access to a patient and prescribed care plan to evaluate outcomes and possibility of readmission. Further experiments will test and validate the risk assessment analysis formed in this paper.

Highlights

  • With the improvements in living conditions and medical science the elderly population continues to expand which necessitates a greater focus on this group’s healthcare

  • Risk assessment (RA) frameworks are in active use within elderly homecare for this purpose, among them are CAFA (Common Assessment Framework for Adults), activities of daily living (ADL) (Activities of Daily Living) and NICE

  • Bluetooth low energy (BLE) as a remote indoor positioning system (IPS) can be used to gather activity patterns of home patients which requires the classification of these observations in home environments, ADL details a set of conditions such as transferring, eating and sedentary levels as a framework to assess home patient health and independence

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Summary

Risk Assessment in the Home

With the improvements in living conditions and medical science the elderly population continues to expand which necessitates a greater focus on this group’s healthcare. As patient care transfers to the uncontrolled environment of the home, significant focus must be placed on the patients short and long-term susceptibility to risk. Each address common care requirements elderly patients have by observing events associated with physical and mental wellbeing risk (Soldato et al, 2007). The diminishing workforce makes the effective delivery of RA frameworks difficult due to the reliance on observations being recorded (CarersUK, 2015). This presents unacceptable availability of services and introduces the possibility of negative risk to the patient who benefit from effective risk and health assessment

Monitoring and Assessment Using BLE
Methodology
Equipment
Event Identification
60 BMP Inconseq Consiste
Discussion
Impact on Risk Assessment
Future Work
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Conclusion
Full Text
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