E-Healthcare at an Experimental Welfare Techno House in Japan

Abstract

An automated monitoring system for home health care has been designed for an experimental house in Japan called the Welfare Techno House (WTH). Automated electrocardiogram (ECG) measurements can be taken while in bed, in the bathtub, and on the toilet, without the subject's awareness, and without using body surface electrodes. In order to evaluate this automated health monitoring system, overnight measurements were performed to monitor health status during the daily lives of both young and elderly subjects.

Smartphone-Based Gait Measurement Application for Exercise and Its Effects on the Lifestyle of Senior Citizens

“…Examples of mounted systems include monitoring systems based on cameras [33,15] or infrared rays [22,35] installed at the user's home. With regard to studies on houses that can monitor residents' activity or health, the Georgia Tech Aware Home [31] and the Welfare Techno House [29,47] are good examples. These houses can monitor the state of their dwellers' activities, their physiological parameters, and sudden risks of emergency that are detected and calculated by sensors in the house, e.g., in living rooms, bathrooms, etc.…”

Ambient Assisted Living using Sensor and Mobile Technologies for Elderly People

“…Other smart home projects include iDorm [33], Grenoble Health Smart Home [29], Gloucester Smart House [34], PROSAFE [30], ENABLE [35], and CareLab [28]. The Welfare Techno House project, which measured indicators such as ECG, body weight, and urinary volume using sensors placed in the bathroom and bathtub [32]. The Ubiquitous Home project [31] is another smart home project in Japan, which uses passive infrared (PIR) sensors, cameras, microphones, pressure sensors, and radiofrequency identification (RFID) technology for monitoring the older adults.…”

Sensors Applied in Healthcare Environments

“…Recent developments in ambient assistive living technologies have demonstrated the feasibility of using ambient sensors in supporting independent living [7]. Unlike wearable sensors, they tend to have more battery and processing capacities, but have limited use in capturing physiological information or in multiple occupancy dwellings.…”