Towards long-term mobility tracking in NTU hospital's elder care center

Abstract

Growth of the elder population gives rise to the increasing demand of long-term elder-care facilities. Most elders living in such facilities suffer from multiple chronic illnesses. Accompanying these illnesses are slow declines of the elders' physical and mental health. Continuous tracking of the elders' daily activities is required to detect the declines early. To facilitate long-term mobility tracking of the elders, we investigate, in this work, the potential of a WSN-based indoor location system as a support for the already-overloaded nursing staff. Through the deployment of a WSN-based Real-Time Indoor Location System (WSN-RTLS) in the university hospital's elder care center for 8 months, we find that: (1) each elder's daily mobility shows a reoccurring pattern. The pattern, however, differs from individual to individual. (2) The mobility level shows a significant variability, i.e., not all elders show reoccurring patterns in mobility levels. These suggest that mere quantity of how much the elders move around the facility will not be a suitable target for behavioral modeling. Exact location of the elders' presence, rather, is more relevant. Insitu WSN-RTLSs would be an enabler towards early detection of the elders' physical or mental decline.