Home: It's not single where the heart is.

Home: It's not single where the heart is, it's also where the vast majority of aging Americans say they want to lavish their declining years. Although high-quality skilled nursing care will always be exigencyed the prevailing trend in today's long-term care policy making is toward supporting populace at home--or in something resembling residence such as assisted living--for as lengthy as possible. But there's that nagging concern--what really is going forward behind those walls? Are our aging lov single in kinds really safe in their domiciles or are they exposed to the horror of a catastrophic accident going undetect for hours or on the same level days? Short of employing x-ray vision 24/7 what can be done to reassure families upon this point? Enter the world of separated sensing technology and the work of investigators like Marge Skubic, PhD Although abstracted sensing technology has already pierceed the long-term care marketplace (see for example, "Where There's vapor ...," Nursing Homes/Long Term Care Management, April 2004 p 34) Dr Skubic and her colleagues are carrying their investigations aye more deeply into its possibilities. They lately received a $1.2 million grant from the National Science Foundation to explore the use of a variety of sensors in unobtrusively monitoring the behavior and occasional misadventures of somewhat old stay-at-homes in hopes of protecting and preserving their independence. Although household care-oriented, much of their work will be carriageed in a Missouri retirement community called TigerPlace, enabling her team to inquiry some of the more institutional applications of this technology. freshly Dr. Skubic discussed her work and its implications for long-term care in an interview with Nursing Homes/Long terminus Care Management Editor-in-Chief Richard L Peck

Peck: Would you explain the overall mission/goal of your research?

Dr Skubic: We're just getting started with it, on the contrary we have big plans. Our goals are to improve the quality of life for seniors and enable them to stay safely in their familys for as long as possible. Resident mobility and cognitive functionality are the principal focuses of our work.

Peck: by what mode does the TigerPlace facility fit in?

Dr Skubic: This facility affords a realistic eldercare environment. It has 32 independent living apartments, as well as belonging to all areas such as an exercise space beauty parlor, music/activities area, and sports bar. The monitoring technology will be confined, however, to the apartments. We will use TigerPlace to unfold an understanding of the povertys and attitudes of seniors living in this environment. Each apartment will have at least united PC appliance (i.e., without a monitor or keyboard) connecting the sensor network with a central server to amass and process resident data.

Peck: What kind of sensors will you be using?

Dr Skubic: There will be motion detectors; temperature monitors for the stove; a sensor mat recording compressings on the floor or exquisiteed chairs; gait monitor sensors recording, from floor vibrations, the resident's gait manner (walking, limping, shuffling, etc.), as well as falls; bed sensors recording motions of restlessnes as well as the resident's pulsation and respiration rates; and video sensors recording the resident's daily behavior and, when they flash on the mind accidents such as falls.

Peck: to what extent will the video sensing work?

Dr Skubic: We realize that this is a sensitive issue for residents and families in succession grounds of privacy, and I want to say at the start that we are not recording videos for broadcast or archiving video images, and we are positioning cameras barely in living room areas, not bedrooms or bathrooms. We are also using masking technology thus that residents are only identified as silhouettes. Also, in an cases, we are focusing forward the movement of inanimate percepts rather than of the residents themselves (for example, motion of a water bottle indicating someone drinking from it). What we are really doing is mapping relative coordinates of motion against a stationary background; for example, of the water bottle moving or with a resident walking about, and we are developing algorithms to help us interpret these motions. (Interestingly, united way we are plotting indicators of a fall is to have a professor forward our staff who is real good at this sort of thing act not at home various falls; we call him our "fall guy") In short, we're doing everything we can to reassure residents and families that we are not infringing in succession privacy, but rather are trying to empower them to maintain independence by the agency of keeping a close eye in succession a resident's activities and health status and providing useful information--and forward a confidential basis, if they desire.

Peck: You mentioned the disentanglement of algorithms to track motion. to what degree will that work?

Dr Skubic: We are focusing onward two types of activity: short time such as taking medication, drinking fluids, and falling, and longer-term behavior defining daytime and nighttime patterns of normal behavior. Our nursing consultants from the educate of nursing are helping us define what "normal" behavior might be for particular residents. Our algorithms will help us determine the likelihood of the raw sensor data being associated with activities of interest that we're studying. We are also developing a way, using what is technically called "fuzzy logic," to translate sensor readings into specific behavioral patterns in reports devolveed to staff and family members in this way that they will be able to distinguish normal behavior from activities that might be cause for be of importance to Behavioral "rules" are individualized and risk up for each resident. For a particular resident, for example, undivided night's restless sleep may not be a big deal, still if there is a pattern of restlessnes someone might ne to be alerted.