Non-Intrusive Monitoring of High Functioning Elderly

描述（由申请人提供）：旨在提高老年人独立生活能力的技术发展通常针对那些有残疾、慢性疾病或其他原因需要帮助照顾的人。本STTR计划特别解决了当前研究中的一个关键差距，即65岁以上老年人的辅助技术，这些老年人功能良好，总体健康，但随着年龄的增长，身体越来越虚弱，容易受到事故或疾病的影响，成为致残的医疗事件，并消除了他们独立生活的能力。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Technological developments aimed at extending the ability of the elderly to live independently often target those people with a disability, chronic condition, or other reason requiring help with their care. A critical gap in current research, specifically addressed by this STTR program, is assistance technology for the population of persons over 65 years of age who are high-functioning and generally healthy, but are growing increasingly frail as they age and susceptible to an accident or illness becoming a disabling medical incident and eliminating their ability to live independently. Those living alone are at the most risk because their illness or injury may go unnoticed for a considerable length of time, turning a minor incident into a serious one. While this population could benefit from monitoring, its members are likely to be intolerant of intrusive monitoring because there is no clear medical need for it and the costs of a "just-in-case" home monitoring systems often outweigh the perceived benefits. To address these issues, this research observes that, in many cases, a concerned neighbor is often the first person to notice a problem simply by observing, in a non-intrusive manner, a large variation in a person's routine (e.g., lights not on when they should be) and taking appropriate action. This effort explores the hypothesis that a low-cost, non-intrusive home monitoring system can provide actionable information on the welfare of a home's occupant, i.e., an 'Electronic Concerned Neighbor'. The innovation that enables this are intelligent decision algorithms that can take simple sensor inputs and learn a person's routine, adapt to changes, detect significant variations, and take appropriate action (e.g., alert a care provider).