An Autonomous Fallers Monitoring Kit: Release 0.0

Abstract

Fall is one of the main causes of the reduction of the Quality of Live in Elderly, since it has a high impact in mortality rate as well as in the probability of different disabilities like Fractures, head injuries, etc, and mainly a loss of confidence. Thus, a monitoring instrument to follow elderly activity is required and the most common non-invasive and easy-to-use are based on wearable devices. This work presents our first prototype of an autonomous, low-cost and easy-to-use elderly activity monitoring kit suitable to be deployed in nursery houses. The prototype is composed of: i) our own data analytics web application deployed in a low cost server located in our laboratory (SERVER) and ii) a transparent plastic case with a set of 10 commercial smartbands (WD), their respective charging docks, one NUC (Next Unit of Computing) as data gateway, one Wi-Fi router and one LTE router. Concerning the case, we can state that each WD has built-in a 3DACC (3DA), a Gyroscope (GY) and a wrist Heart Rate sensor (HR). Besides each WD is running our own software instead the pre-built commercial one in order to achieve two issues: recording high frequency data (1Hz for HR and 10Hz for 3DA and GY) and optimize the battery life (18 hours with 10Hz continuous sensors recording). Finally, a first trial of the presented kit is being carried out in a Nursery House in Burgos (Spain), and the participants enrolled criteria have been designed by a gerontologist from the Diputación de Burgos (Spain).