Finding Lost and Mentally Impaired Patients Through Smart Devices and Algorithms

随着加拿大人口的老龄化，其人口变得更容易受到各种形式的痴呆症引起的认知障碍的影响，这些痴呆症使人们在流浪、迷路和与他人交流方面变得具有挑战性。随着损伤变得更加严重，公民成为延长护理设施（ECF）的患者。一个日益严重的问题是如何确定从ECF的直接原因中逃跑的患者的物理位置。虽然采取了措施提供安全的设施，但错误确实会发生——可能导致患者受伤或死亡。智能手机和智能手表等移动技术无处不在，而且相对便宜。这些技术可以作为监测患者行踪的有效解决方案，而不会造成不必要的干扰。我们提出了一个端到端系统框架，以监测和记录患者的物理位置使用传感器的移动设备。据我们所知，这个框架是独一无二的，因为它将向授权护理人员提供失踪患者当前位置的实时信息。拟议的系统由移动应用程序组成，这些应用程序例行地向服务器提供遥测，信息将在服务器上存储和分析。此外，如果被监测的患者走出指定的“安全区域”，系统将提醒负责人员。这项技术直接适用于由于资源有限而无法进行持续监测的护理机构。我们设想这项技术将允许某些认知受损的人留在家里，同时减少家庭照顾者担心他们下落的压力。通过使用该系统，可以降低游民行为带来的经济成本和情绪压力。LocateMotion将寻求将创新的端到端技术推向市场，为参与其中的护理人员带来“安心”。

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.