Wearable sensors and domotic environment for elderly people

Abstract

Technology is an important instrument for a new concept of home care and continuous monitoring. New and smaller devices and communication advances have constructed a more humanitarian model of assisted alternative to hospital. For this purpose an integral scheme must to consider physiological, emotional, social and environmental conditions that promote the multidisciplinary support for the patients. In this work we present an Integral Assistive Home Care System, specially designed for elderly or chronic illness people. The approach proposed comprises a user wearable device, a domotic system’s core installed in a personal computer (PC) and an ichnographic software (SICAA) that allows the interaction of the patient with the environment and peripheral devices. Wearable sensors system have a master module that deals with data acquisition, synchronization and wireless transmission, connected to sensors or slaves which acquire biological signals and process them to minimize the amount of data to be transmitted by Bluetooth. The biologic variables (each with its own specific acquisition and preprocessing module) acquired are temperature, heart rate and pulse oximetry, and kinetics measurements through an inertial sensor IMU. The domotic SICAA soft and control hardware was designed to achieve some automatic tasks through an ichnographic software. The programmed functions comprises: house control (that comprises blinds, lights, orthopedic bed, air conditioner, television, and intercom); medication alarm; career communication (nurse call, voice synthesizer), and computer access (internet, chat, games, and text processors). The entire system is low cost, modular and adaptable for different user’s capabilities and pathologies.