An outdoor intelligent healthcare monitoring device for the elderly

Abstract

The current paper presents an outdoor monitoring system for elderly people, which can transmit information on physiological signals and falling events to a healthcare center at any time and from any place. To detect simultaneously the occurrence of any falling event, as well as the relative electrocardiogram (ECG) signal of the user, a multi-thread method is proposed with the objective of enhancing the response time and the accuracy of detection. A healthcare box is used to determine the relative position of the patient through a global positioning system for fall detection; moreover, an ECG signal acquisition thread is adopted to increase the precision of the fall detection system. Integrating a precise map into the monitoring system facilitates understanding of a client user of the correct location and surrounding environment using the portable display. According to experimental results based on 4,000 samples, successful detection time with the multi-thread method was reduced by 38%, thereby increasing rescue opportunities for elderly patients who are at risk <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">1</sup> .