Low Cost GPS Tracking for the Elderly and Alzheimer Patients

Abstract

As a consequence of the increase in life expectancy, the healthcare needs faced by the older generation are growing. As such, new applications using emerging technologies are needed to contribute for their safety and well-being. This paper presents a low cost GPS tracking system focused on Alzheimer patients which relies in a mobile device with GPS functionality allowing to track and locate patients in near real-time. As our focus is Alzheimer, specific preventive functionalities were taken into account such as flexibility for the caregivers or healthcare professionals to configure alerts. Since current solutions have considerable costs associated, we present a long-term comparative cost analysis between existent solutions and our proposal.