Design and deployment of a heart rate monitoring system in a senior center

Abstract

While wearable sensor systems are now widely used to monitor vital signs in hospitals and at home, most such systems are designed for bedridden patients. In contrast, the use of wireless sensors to capture physiological data from patients for long term health monitoring is becoming increasingly popular although some previous studies recorded complaints from users about discomfort when wearing these. In addition, these systems can sometimes suffer from interference from existing Wi-Fi traffic. Therefore, a sensor system that is both comfortable to use and does not encounter interference with existing wireless traffic is required. This paper presents a system design that includes a probe, sensor, radio, and receiver for a long term heart rate monitoring in a senior center. This system has been deployed in a senior center since May 2012, and 63 seniors have used this system in this period. The senior center has its own wireless network, and no changes were made to this. The monitoring system presented in this work runs together with the existing network, and achieves a 97% packet delivery rate.

Defining the concepts of a smart nursing home and its potential technology utilities that integrate medical services and are acceptable to stakeholders: a scoping review

“…This scoping review identified and extracted the same determinants from the reviewed articles. In addition, the older adults' severity of illnesses, the users with a higher level of education and better tech-savviness, and the HCPs with fewer years of working experience (younger age) were associated with higher acceptability of smart technologies [54,71,126,133,142]. These findings were consistent with the results from a literature review in a home-based care setting.…”

“…Sensors were installed in the mattresses and rooms to monitor the older adults' behaviours and sleeping quality, especially used for residents with limited mobility [51,90]. Biosensors, ultrasonic sensors, infrared sensors, radio frequency identification (RFID), and GPS were mainly used with IoT terminals [71,77,83,87]. Cameras, mobile devices, and personal computers were embedded with sensor networks to assist the real-time monitoring.…”

“…The users increased their awareness and consideration of adopting smart technologies when they recognised that smart solutions would be necessary for care [75,152]. The appraisals of new technology on ease of use or ease to learn [129,133,149], user-friendly [71,129,184], and convenience [122,147] in the coping process enhanced user acceptability of smart technology. Users also preferred the "humancentric" designs to fit their lifestyles [76,99].…”

“…The usability appraisals depend on the availability or accessibility of these options, necessary for care, easy to understand, learn and use, affordability, compatible, the availability of tech-support during having difficulties of using a product, and "human-centric" designs such as matching preferences of users, portable and enjoyable to use Perceived usability (positive) The difficulty of resources availability and accessibility Byrne, 2005 [178] Lacking in supportive resources or tech-support In contrast, the features of unusefulness or uncertainty of using smart technologies in the coping process were reported to affect the user acceptability negatively, such as the unusefulness [129,149], difficulty in use or to learn [101,208], and lacking supportive resources [169,177] or tech-support in applying technologies [178]. Some HCPs perceived new technologies as a burden to disrupt routines or added workloads, and it may cause reducing their time to provide essential nursing care for the residents, for example, initiating a new information system requiring manual input of residents' health records into the system caused frustrations among the HCPs [71,181].…”

“…Attributes of residents and HCPs were observed to associate with the acceptability and adoption of smart technologies. The attribute of residents identified from the reviewed articles was the severity of illness [71]. The attributes of HCPs in positively accepting smart technologies in nursing homes were higher educational attainment [126], a few of year working experience (younger age), and better tech-savviness [54,133,142].…”