SBIR Phase I: Automated Monitoring and Alarming for Elder Care

这项小型企业创新研究第一阶段计划旨在为独自在家或接受护理的长者开发一套自动监察系统。该系统将使护理人员能够远程参与任何需要干预的事件或行为趋势。具体来说，该项目旨在开发一个实验室原型和自动图像分析，以生成行为报告和警报。随着老年人在美国人口中所占的比例不断增加，以及养老院成本的迅速上涨，拥有这样的技术来延长一个人独立生活的能力是非常重要的。提出的解决方案基于计算机视觉技术的使用，这也有助于减轻隐私问题，因为它不像其他解决方案那样要求将视频传输给护理人员。拟议的项目将有助于研究和开发使用摄像机产生警报和活动报告的新技术，并可能对医疗保健行业，特别是老年人护理产生广泛影响。家庭监控解决方案将吸引几个群体，包括老年人、他们的家庭和养老院行业。影响采用的因素包括老年人人口的增长、高医疗保健支出以及养老院行业面临的成本和服务挑战。与现有的监控产品和服务相比，自动监控和警报可能有几个优势，例如，用户在遇到麻烦时按下磨损或壁挂式呼叫按钮，或者当加速度计注意到某些模式时，他们佩戴加速度计触发警报。该SBIR项目开发的活动识别能力将导致更快的警报，并将减轻隐私问题。

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project aims to develop an automated monitoring system for the elderly staying alone at home or under nursing care. This system would enable the caregivers to remotely attend to any event or behavior trends requiring intervention. Specifically, the project seeks to develop a laboratory prototype and automated image analysis for generating behavior reports and alerts. With the elderly representing an increasing percentage of the United States population and rapid inflation in nursing home costs, it is very important to have such technologies that extend one's ability to live independently. The proposed solution is based on the use of computer vision techniques that also help in mitigating privacy concerns by not requiring videos to be transmitted to the caregiver like competing solutions. The proposed project will contribute to the research and development of new techniques for alarm generation and activity reporting using video cameras and could have a broad impact on the healthcare industry, especially for elder care. The home monitoring solution will appeal to several constituencies, including the elderly, their families, and the nursing home industry. Factors impacting adoption include the growing population of seniors, high health care expenditures, and the cost and service challenges facing the nursing home industry. The automated monitoring and alarming can potentially offer several advantages over existing monitoring products and services, such as, where subscribers press a worn or wall-mounted call button when in trouble or where they wear an accelerometer that triggers an alarm when the accelerometer notices certain patterns. The activity recognition capability developed as a result of this SBIR project will lead to quicker alerts and will mitigate privacy concerns.