Wearable Activity Trackers Supporting Elderly Living Independently

Abstract

Preserving independence is of high importance for aging adults. Information Technology based solutions in the context of "elderly living independently" and "ambient assisted living" provide support to increase factors like emotional security, physical activity and general well-being. It is expected that wearable activity trackers positively influence these factors. Hence, this work investigated the integration of wearable activity trackers into medical IT systems from the perspective of technical interoperability, as this is a key feature to improve quality and reliability of both the system itself and the health related data. Based on a previously conducted market analysis, investigating the most prominent wearable activity trackers on their communication interfaces, an medical interoperability standards based approach for data integration to medical information systems was proposed and prototypically implemented to study feasibility. The prototype was successfully validated with interoperability tests against the specification of HL7 FHIR to align with the Personal Connected Health Alliance (PCHA) guidelines. The results showed that the implementation of the interoperability standard HL7 FHIR for this purpose was possible and could be used as an approach to integrate several manufacturer independent wearable activity trackers in a common system to increase flexibility and extensibility. The quality of the data can be increased as it is syntactically and semantically structured according to the HL7 FHIR specification, which may facilitate more reliable approaches for automated fall detection or emergency alarms as a follow-up. However, to fulfill the requirements of semantical interoperability a value-set was defined. Summarizing, without change of thinking and more effort on the manufacturers side to change proprietary communication interfaces (which still is the case to a very high degree) to standardized ones, the advantages based on using interoperability standards can't be effective.