Very small & low cost wearable "care timeliness" monitor

描述(由申请人提供)：为虚弱的老年人提供身体护理的及时性和可靠性对维持他们的健康至关重要。这种对行动不便的人的身体护理可能包括重新定位帮助预防或帮助治愈压疮，如厕帮助或大小便失禁产品更换，洗澡，运动帮助和喂养帮助。机构常规身体护理，无论是在老年急性护理医院还是在疗养院，通常都是由护理助手提供的。护理助理工作量大，工资往往不高，因此工作流失率很高，如果他们是新移民，可能会有书面语言困难。对于临床管理来说，监测护理助理提供护理的可靠性并非易事，因为大部分护理都是在病人房间的隐私中进行的，没有留下明显的可观察到的“残留物”。几乎没有什么技术可以用来监控身体护理。患有记忆障碍或痴呆症的老年客户可能无法报告护理缺陷，认知正常的患者不经常报告照顾者的疏忽是有社会原因的。如果没有监测护理的及时性和可靠性的手段，临床管理纠正护理过程缺陷和奖励那些在工作中最尽责的人的能力就会受到损害。这项应用的重点是开发一种可穿戴的身体位置监测器，可以帮助管理身体护理并促进护理质量保证计划。在应用第一阶段，我们计划开发一种位置和范围的运动记录设备，它非常小，可以放在标准3/4“创可贴的纱布中，价格低廉，可以常规用于维持护理改善计划，并且非常坚固，可以依靠它提供多年的服务。在应用第二阶段，我们计划开发软件，自动识别身体护理关键方面的运动特征，并报告护理交付的及时性，而不需要临床医生的数据分析专业知识。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The timeliness and reliability of the delivery of body care for the frail elderly is crucial to the maintenance of their health. This physical caregiving for those with mobility impairments may include repositioning assistance to prevent or aid healing pressure ulcers, toileting assistance or incontinence product changing, bathing, aid with exercise, and feeding assistance. Institutional routine body care, whether at a geriatric acute care hospital or in a nursing home, is usually delivered by nursing aides. Nursing aides have large workloads, are not often paid well and, hence, have high job turnover rates, and may have written language difficulties if they are recent immigrants. It is not easy for clinical management to monitor the reliability of care delivery by nursing aides since much of the care is done in the privacy of a patient's room and leaves no obvious observable "residue". Little technology is available to monitor physical caregiving. Elderly clients with memory impairments or dementia may not be able to report care deficiencies and there are social reasons why cognitively intact patients don't often report caregivers' oversights. Without a means to monitor the timeliness and reliability of caregiving, clinical management is impaired in its ability to correct care process deficiencies and to reward those who are most conscientious in their work. The focus of this application is to develop a wearable body position monitor that can assist in managing physical caregiving and facilitate care quality assurance programs. In application phase 1, we plan to develop a position and range of motion recording device that is so small that it can fit in the gauze of a standard 3/4" Band-Aid, so inexpensive that it can be routinely used to sustain care improvement programs, and so robust that it can be depended upon to provide years of service. In application phase 2, we plan to develop software that automatically identifies the movement signatures of crucial aspects of body care and reports the timeliness of care delivery without the need for clinician data analysis expertise.