System for PCS Agencies to Monitor, Investigate and Respond to Elder Safety Risks

简介（由申请人提供）：这项快速申请的总体目标是建立和部署一个创新的系统，帮助更多的老人继续在家中生活，同时得到个人护理服务机构的安全照顾。根据研究小组之前开发跌倒传感器和其他技术的经验，让老年人“原地变老”，我们开发了一种不引人注目的、在家的、被动的系统，使PCS护理人员能够远程警报危险情况。然后，他们可以通过语音和视频通信远程调查问题，并做出相应的反应。目前，在1130万独居老人中，约有30万人由个人服务机构照顾。我们假设该系统将显著提高PCS机构的效率，从而使他们能够以较低的成本安全地照顾更多的老年人。这反过来将使更多的老年人不必搬进养老院或辅助生活设施。据我们所知，这是学术界或商业上唯一正在开发的这种系统。总的来说，该系统包括一个定制的活动/跌倒传感器和双向语音通信器（由老年人佩戴），几个现成的运动传感器和报警设备，两个夜视摄像头，一个基于平板电脑的家庭蜂窝“集线器”，以及一个安全服务器，用于分析数据并将其集成到PCS护理人员的现有工作流程中。第一阶段的目标是根据团队先前对PCS潜在客户需求的研究，开发这个系统的试点，然后通过在少数安老院部署和测试这个原型来获得反馈。在第二阶段，我们将完善和扩大试点，以创建一个功能齐全的系统，然后在更大的范围内部署该系统，为期一年。在此期间，我们将收集数据，以确定系统提供商是否提高了安全性，降低了照顾单个老年人的成本，并提高了PCS机构的盈利能力和/或效率。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The overall objective of this Fast Track SBIR application is to create and deploy an innovative system that will help more elders to continue living at home while being safely cared for by Personal Care Service (PCS) agencies. Based on the research team's prior experience developing fall sensors and other technologies to allow elders to "age in place", we have developed an unobtrusive, in-home, passive, system that allows PCS caregivers to be remotely alerted to dangerous situations. They can then remotely investigate the issue through voice and video communications and respond accordingly. Currently, of the 11.3M elders who live alone, about 300,000 of them cared for by PCS agencies. We hypothesize that this system will significantly increase the efficiency of the PCS agencies and thus allow them to safely care for more elders at a lower cost to each client. This in-turn will allow more elderly people to avoid having to move into nursing homes or assisted living facilities. To our knowledge, this is the only such system being developed in academia or commercially. At a high-level the proposed system consists of a custom activity/fall sensor and two-way voice communicator (worn by the elder), several off-the-shelf motion sensors and alarming devices, two night-vision cameras, an in-home cellular "hub" based on a tablet computer, and a secure sever to analyze the data and present it to PCS caregivers in a way that integrates into their existing workflow. The aims of Phase I are to develop a pilot of this system based on the team's previous research into the needs of our potential PCS clients, then to obtain feedback by deploying and testing this prototype in a small number of elders' homes. In Phase II we will refine and expand the pilot to create a fully functional system, then deploy that system on a much wider scale for a one-year period. During this time we will collect data to determine if the system providers improved safety, the reduction of costs to care for an individual elder, and increased profitability and/or efficiency for the PCS agency.