I-Corps: A Sensor Technology Box for Smart Health

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The U.S. Census Bureau reports that the U.S. population of people aged 65 and up will grow more than double in between 2010 and 2050. The market for remote patient monitoring is expected to grow from $10.6 billion in 2012 to $21.2 billion in 2017. Inspired by this growing market need, this project aims to build an integrated and reliable sensor system that can be deployed for independent living applications across multiple homes for monitoring functional, behavioral and cognitive health of older adults. This enables the older adults to live independently in their own home environment and helps them age gracefully. The project targets to develop a low-cost interoperable platform technology which is highly-available and affordable by low-income group. The sensor prototypes and services developed in this project will be deployed in retirement community and assisted living centers in greater Baltimore metropolitan area. The scope of the project involves designing a low-cost solution connecting the varied sensor technologies and diverse software platforms to an end-user controlled system for independent living applications. The project aims to minimize the sensor malfunctioning, power consumption, network resource usage, connectivity and bandwidth requirements; producing a scalable and reliable system that can be rapidly deployed in home environment with minimal overhead. The specific goals of the project include: (1) design inexpensive miniaturized ARM-based motion sensor nodes with high reliability, (2) integrate the sensors with service-oriented architecture and models, (3) develop activity recognition algorithms, and (4) evaluate the overall system performance. These goals will be reevaluated through rigorous testing, deployment and customers' feedback during the I-Corps curriculum. By streamlining the proposed solutions in a low-cost, reliable and interoperable system the project is expected to accelerate the rapid development and deployment of a one-stop technological solution for remote home health and wellness monitoring. The team will investigate the potential market opportunity by interviewing the customers, develop proof-of-concept prototype and deploy that in real settings for the validations. The feedback from the users will be incorporated in the prototype design phase and a business plan will be postulated at the end of the I-Corps program.