Wearable Technology for Detecting Significant Moments in Individuals with Dementia

Abstract

The detection of significant moments can support the care of individuals with dementia by making visible what is most meaningful to them and maintaining a sense of interpersonal connection. We present a novel intelligent assistive technology (IAT) for the detection of significant moments based on patterns of physiological signal changes in individuals with dementia and their caregivers. The parameters of the IAT are tailored to each individual's idiosyncratic physiological response patterns through an iterative process of incorporating subjective feedback on videos extracted from candidate significant moments identified through the IAT algorithm. The IAT was tested on three dyads (individual with dementia and their primary caregiver) during an eight-week movement program. Upon completion of the program, the IAT identified distinct, personal characteristics of physiological responsiveness in each participant. Tailored algorithms could detect moments of significance experienced by either member of the dyad with an agreement with subjective reports of 70%. These moments were constituted by both physical and emotional significances (e.g., experiences of pain or anxiety) and interpersonal significance (e.g., moments of heighted connection). We provide a freely available MATLAB toolbox with the IAT software in hopes that the assistive technology community can benefit from and contribute to these tools for understanding the subjective experiences of individuals with dementia.

Ambient Intelligence Based on IoT for Assisting People with Alzheimer’s Disease Through Context Histories

“…In order to explore an application of remote monitoring technologies, the work developed by Amato et al [58] can detect the onset of crises in patients affected by Alzheimer's disease and aims to reduce the psychological burden suffered by caregivers. Lai Kwan et al [59] presented in 2019 a work with the objective of detecting significant moments of people with dementia, making visible what is most significant to them and maintaining a sense of interpersonal connection between their caregivers and family members.…”

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“…(8) Intelligent assistive technology (IAT) [25] is a wearable system that detects and tracks significant moments based on patterns of physiological signal changes in PwD.…”

“…Intelligent assistive technology (IAT) [ 25 ] is a wearable system that detects and tracks significant moments based on patterns of physiological signal changes in PwD. Main functions: detecting salient physical and emotional events, recording the physiological signals from a device worn on the hand of PwD.…”

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