Improved Care for Senior Citizens – The Sensor Experience

People with long term medical problems face decreased mobility and need assistance for this. This is more in the case of senior citizens. Simple tasks like walking around the house, going to the dining table or the washroom become very difficult.
They need support which may or may not be available. More than the support there is also a need to actually provide assistance to the family members who may be in other areas of the home/location. To provide them with alerts if an episode has taken place.
A system that monitors mobility of senior citizens would be sensor and notification based. The intent for it would be to cover the following four objectives.
a. Alert family in case there is an episode, something that is not normal e.g. the person has fallen. The alert would allow for a rapid response to assist the person. The response and alert mechanism combined with the sensors would be configurable to particular types of situations and responses.
b. Pre-emptive tracking of changes in mobility and alertness. This could prevent any untoward incident. This could also include tracking changes in blood glucose, oxygen and hydration levels. Further, the sensors could be used to guide/remind the patient to complete certain steps at predetermined time periods.
c. The service provides a complete picture of activity, alertness and links changes to changes in medication and it’s related efficacy. This would help the doctor who attends to this person.
d. An integrated platform that includes in-location and outside location tracking with the help of related products and services. Some examples of this could be footwear with certain kind of sensors, linkages to ingestible sensors solutions for people Parkinson’s condition and more.
The above is a broad contour of a solution one could evaluate and perhaps some of the elements already exist. It has significant potential to deliver benefits to patients and their families at home.