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

描述(由申请人提供)：此快速通道SBIR应用程序的总体目标是创建和部署一个创新的系统，帮助更多的老年人继续生活在家中，同时得到个人护理服务(PCS)机构的安全照顾。基于研究团队先前开发跌倒传感器和其他技术以使老年人“就地老化”的经验，我们开发了一种不显眼的、在家中、被动的系统，允许PCS照顾者远程警报危险情况。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响应。目前，在1130万独居老年人中，约有30万人由PCS机构照顾。我们假设，这一系统将显著提高PCS机构的效率，从而使它们能够以较低的成本安全地照顾更多的老年人。这将使更多的老年人不必入住养老院或辅助生活设施。据我们所知，这是学术界或商业上正在开发的唯一这样的系统。在高层次上，建议的系统包括一个定制的活动/跌倒传感器和双向语音通信器(老年人佩戴)，几个现成的运动传感器和警报设备，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，用于分析数据并以整合到现有工作流程的方式提供给PCS照顾者。第一阶段的目标是基于团队之前对潜在PCS客户需求的研究，开发该系统的试点，然后通过在少数老年人之家部署和测试该原型来获得反馈。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，降低了照顾个人老年人的成本，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.