SBIR Phase I: Automated Monitoring and Alarming for Elder Care

这一小型企业创新研究第一阶段项目旨在为独居在家或接受护理的老年人开发一套自动化监测系统。该系统将使照顾者能够远程关注任何需要干预的事件或行为趋势。具体地说，该项目寻求开发一个实验室原型和自动化图像分析，以生成行为报告和警报。随着老年人在美国人口中所占比例越来越大，养老院费用迅速上涨，拥有这种技术来扩大一个人独立生活的能力是非常重要的。拟议的解决方案基于计算机视觉技术的使用，该技术也有助于缓解隐私问题，因为它不需要像竞争方案那样将视频传输给照顾者。拟议的项目将有助于研究和开发使用摄像机产生警报和报告活动的新技术，并可能对医疗行业产生广泛影响，特别是对老年人护理。家庭监控解决方案将吸引几个群体，包括老年人、他们的家人和养老院行业。影响收养的因素包括不断增长的老年人口，高昂的医疗支出，以及养老院行业面临的成本和服务挑战。与现有的监控产品和服务相比，自动监控和报警可能会提供几个优势，例如，用户在遇到问题时按下磨损的或安装在墙上的呼叫按钮，或者他们佩戴的加速度计在加速度计注意到特定模式时触发警报。该SBIR项目开发的活动识别功能将导致更快的警报，并将缓解隐私问题。

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project aims to develop an automated monitoring system for the elderly staying alone at home or under nursing care. This system would enable the caregivers to remotely attend to any event or behavior trends requiring intervention. Specifically, the project seeks to develop a laboratory prototype and automated image analysis for generating behavior reports and alerts. With the elderly representing an increasing percentage of the United States population and rapid inflation in nursing home costs, it is very important to have such technologies that extend one's ability to live independently. The proposed solution is based on the use of computer vision techniques that also help in mitigating privacy concerns by not requiring videos to be transmitted to the caregiver like competing solutions. The proposed project will contribute to the research and development of new techniques for alarm generation and activity reporting using video cameras and could have a broad impact on the healthcare industry, especially for elder care. The home monitoring solution will appeal to several constituencies, including the elderly, their families, and the nursing home industry. Factors impacting adoption include the growing population of seniors, high health care expenditures, and the cost and service challenges facing the nursing home industry. The automated monitoring and alarming can potentially offer several advantages over existing monitoring products and services, such as, where subscribers press a worn or wall-mounted call button when in trouble or where they wear an accelerometer that triggers an alarm when the accelerometer notices certain patterns. The activity recognition capability developed as a result of this SBIR project will lead to quicker alerts and will mitigate privacy concerns.