Finding Lost and Mentally Impaired Patients Through Smart Devices and Algorithms

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As Canada's population ages its population becomes more vulnerable to cognitive impairment caused byvarious forms of dementia where wandering, becoming lost and communications with other becomeschallenging. As the impairment becomes more acute, citizens become patients within extended care facilities(ECF). A growing problem is how to determine the physical location of patients who have eloped from theimmediate grounds of an ECF. While steps are taken to provide secure facilities, mistakes dohappen--potentially leading to the injury or death of the patient. Mobile technologies such as smartphones andsmartwatches are ubiquitous and relatively inexpensive. These technologies may serve as effective solutions tomonitor patient whereabouts without undue intrusion.We propose an end-to-end system framework to monitor and log the physical location of patients using sensorsin mobile devices. To our knowledge, this framework is unique, as it will provide a live feed of the currentlocation of lost patients to authorized caregivers. The proposed system consists of mobile applications thatroutinely provide telemetry to a server where the information will be stored and analyzed. Furthermore, thesystem will alert responsible personnel should a patient being monitored go outside of the specified "safe area".This technology is directly applicable to care facilities where constant monitoring is not possible due to limitedresources. We envision this technology will allow certain cognitively impaired individuals to remain at homelonger while reducing the stress of family caregiver concerned about their whereabouts. By using this system,the economic cost and emotional stress caused by wandering behavior will be reduced. LocateMotion will seekto bring to market the innovative end-to-end technology to be developed in this proposal--bringing "peace ofmind" to participating care givers.