EAGER: An In-Home Health Alert System with Remote Care Coordination

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The unobtrusive monitoring of individuals with in-home sensors offers enormous potential for detecting early health problems-before they become big problems--so timely interventions can be provided to improve the health trajectory. The result is continued high functional ability, independence, and better health outcomes. Early detection of health changes is the key to this approach. This project leverages ongoing work at the University of Missouri in Health Alert Systems with sensor technology. A scaled-up version of the Health Alert System is being tested in senior housing in Cedar Falls, Iowa, using in-home sensors and remote video conferencing for nurse care coordination. Fiber networking provides the bandwidth and latency essential for the project. The Health Alert System includes motion sensors for activity monitoring and Kinect depth images for gait analysis, and integrates a new hydraulic bed sensor that captures quantitative pulse, respiration, and restlessness. Pattern recognition algorithms are used to look for changes in the sensor data patterns and generate health alerts to clinicians, who provide further diagnosis and determine appropriate interventions. The usability and effectiveness of the remote Health Alert System will be evaluated for managing chronic health conditions. Testing the Health Alert System at a remote site from the healthcare providers will provide important information about how the approach scales up into other settings with high speed video conferencing and transfer of sensor data. This will provide an important next step towards moving the approach into independent housing where seniors want to be and offers potential healthcare cost savings.