Tag: in-home health-care

Article

Monitoring of breathing irregularities

An algorithm can use WiFi signal changes to help identify breathing issues | Engadget

In-vehicle presence detection

From the horse’s mouth

Wi-Fi Alliance

Lisbon demonstration showcases how Wi-Fi Sensing can assist in a critical scenario | Wi-Fi Alliance

My Comments

The Wi-Fi Alliance is extending the Wi-Fi network technology beyond a local data network technology towards a presence and movement sensing technology.

This can exploit newer Wi-Fi technologies like Wi-Fi 5 onwards which implement MIMO multiple-RF-frontend technologies; or the increasingly-common multiple-access-point Wi-Fi networks. Here, it is about sensing disturbance in electromagnetic wave patterns that are the basis of radio technology whenever people or things move about.

A viable use case that has been demonstrated is a “child presence detection” setup for motor vehicles. Here, this detects the presence of a baby, small child or dog within a motor vehicle’s interior and alerts the driver to the child’s or animal’s presence. This is to avoid incidents like the toddler who was “forgotten” in a childcare facility’s minibus where the child was at risk of overheating for example due to it being asleep and out of sight in the vehicle.

This approach doesn’t just sense the presence of the child in a closed vehicle but also monitors biometric signs like breathing so it is a live person or animal. As well, it is based around two Wi-Fi access points within the vehicle – one on the driver’s side of the dashboard and one under the front passenger seat to create the sensing envelope. This is typical for most passenger cars with the front seat row and the back seat row but could be reworked for larger vehicles like station wagons or minibuses.

Once proven in a real world situation, this use case could be about a feature that is mandated by motor-vehicle safety standards bodies as part of a vehicle’s safety rating or as a mandatory feature for vehicles to have before they are on the market.

It is also being seen as a technology to identify whether someone in the house has breathing issues along with simple use cases like presence and motion sensing within the house for energy efficiency, security and convenience functionality in the smart home. I would also see it as a boon towards independent ageing at home by detecting falls for example.

What is happening is that Wi-Fi technology will come in to play for more than just a backbone for a home network. Here, it would be about safety or in-home healthcare that assures some form of independence. This is while it can still serve that role of a data network backbone.

There is a strong interest in using Internet-based connectivity as a tool for facilitating in-home healthcare.

A Bluetooth-connected pulse oximeter in action

This involves the use of a mix of sensor types that are typically used to observe a patient along with the use of regular, mobile and other computing devices to process and present this information to the carers and to the medical professionals. It also includes implementing voice and video telephony to allow medical professionals to communicate with the patient without the need to frequently travel to where they live.

Why the interest?

Ageing at home

This is where a senior citizen is able to live independently at their home as much as possible but have supporting care from relatives, friends and professional carers.

A tablet used as part of an in-home telemedicine setup

One of the reasons driving “ageing at home” is the fact that the generation of people born through World War II and the post-war Baby Boomers will be entering their senior years which will place strong demands on health care and welfare facilities that cater to this group of people.

Another is that an increasing number of aged-care facilities have been associated with substandard quality of care – “I don’t want to end up in the nursing home”.  This is brought about with more of us being aware of this level of care either through observing how those we have known in our life’s journey that were looked after in those facilities were being treated, or hearing about instances of substandard care in the media such as the infamous “kerosene bath” incident that hit the news in Australia in the early 2000s.

This has also been driven by the trend towards health-care deinstitutionalisation affecting geriatric and palliative care where there isn’t a desire to rely on large facilities for this kind of care.

Other healthcare needs

Increasingly hospitals are looking towards “hospital in the home” or similar programs as a way to provide ongoing care for convalescent patients and those with illnesses that require long-term attention. Here, the care associated with what would typically be provided in a hospital, typically nursing-focused procedures, would be offered at the patient’s home but with visiting nurses, doctors and allied staff.

Even obstetric care is also affected by this trend, with an increased preference for minimal hands-on professional care for low-risk mothers when they go in to labour. Similarly, low-risk psychiatric care is being delivered at home thanks to telecommunications-based technologies.

The advantages that are being put forward for this kind of care is that the patient can stay in the familiar surroundings of their home and, again, has been underscored by the concept of deinstitutionalisation in healthcare. Governments and others also see it as a cost-saving because they can focus a hospital’s beds towards those needing acute care.

The rural community are seeing an application for this kind of technology so as to avoid the need for frequent long-distance travel which would be of importance when it comes to specialised or advanced healthcare.

How is the kind of healthcare delivered?

Here, the focus is on observational healthcare where medical professionals can assess the situation based on either the data that is collected or through communications with the patient. In some cases, it may be based on an event-driven principle where the professional is alerted if the situation goes beyond certain limits.

This is facilitated through the concept of “telemedicine” where the data is conveyed through an Internet connection and has been facilitated through various technologies.

One of these is “machine vision” where one or more cost-effective high-resolution cameras feeds images in to a platform-based computer which runs software that recognises and interprets these images for medical use. One application that was put forward was to observe a patient’s pulse using a camera that observed the brightness of one’s face as the heart beats. Another application is to use a smartphone’s or tablet’s camera to read fluid-analysis strips as part of assessing urine or blood while an app in that device interprets this information rather than a person comparing what is seen on the strip against a chart.

Another of these is the implementation of common communications technologies like Bluetooth, Zigbee or Wi-Fi in sensor devices. This can lead towards the existence of cost-effective sensor devices that can work with existing computer devices with a minimal need for extra hardware, while these devices can use cost-effective software to interpret and present this information. This has led to startup companies and tech innovators developing devices like “wandering-alert” socks that work with Bluetooth and apps.

What needs to be done?

An issue that will affect in-home telehealth is where device manufacturers and health providers legally stand when it comes to providing these services.

One of the questions that is being raised is the use of non-medical sensor devices for medical applications. One of the scenarios is the use of a general wellness device like a fitness band or a wellness-focused thermometer as a medical sensor for clinical purposes. Another scenario would be the use of a “non-wellness” sensor like a security system’s PIR and door sensors, a home-automation sensor, or a smartphone’s camera for medical-observation purposes with these devices feeding their data to software running on a platform-based computing device.

These questions are being examined by the US’s Food and Drug Administration with respect to wellness-focused devices serving as medical devices in this context. But implementing home automation and security in this context may require a case-by-case assessment based on the actual installation and would only work with geriatric, psychiatric or allied situations where observational healthcare is the order of the day.

Similarly, software that uses devices like cameras for medical reasons like “machine vision” may have to be certified by medical-device authorities to be sure that the software provides accurate results no matter the input device. In the case of software that uses cameras, there would be a requirement for a minimum resolution for the camera to turn out consistently accurate results.

Conclusion

Once the issues that affect the provision of Internet-assisted in-home health care are identified and worked out, then it could be feasible for the home to be a place to deliver continual health care.

Article

CSIRO app to help older people live at home safely | Aged And Community Services Australia

My Comments

Increasingly, the home network is becoming a key feature to support the “ageing at home” concept where an older person can live in their home yet is monitored for signs of ill-health or is assisted as they complete regular tasks using the technology supported by these networks.

One of the main goals is to support the concept of deinstitutionalisation in aged care and allied health care, which is becoming more relevant as we see an increasingly-ageing population accelerated by the baby boomers reaching the old age. This concept also reduces the need to build many aged-care facilities which also reduces the costs associated with building them.

There have been efforts in the UK to provide for dignified independent living for older people including the use of projected text to remind Alzheimer’s patients of stages in a cooking procedure and a GPS system to help with shopping. Similarly, IRIS who is a company in the US is distributing through an American chain of  hardware stores products and services that also are about keeping tabs on one’s elderly relatives. This is being augmented by Fujitsu refining technology that makes a digital-camera image sensor measure one’s pulse which comes in handy with in-home aged care.

In the latest effort, the CSIRO have established a system to help with this concept. This is based around a mobile-platform tablet that works along with a system of sensors to observe the health and well-being of the senior citizen.

Energy sensors aren’t just to “be green” in this case, but to monitor use of appliances as part of a healthy daily lifestyle. For example, knowing if they have used the kettle to make a cup of coffee or tea at all or the use of a “cooking device” such as the stove, the microwave oven or toaster oven indicates if the person is well and looking after themselves. Similarly, knowing if they have left the oven or stove hob on for too long can indicate a dangerous situation.

Similarly, those motion detectors that are part of a security system can also identify whether the person has entered particular rooms like the kitchen as part of their regular activities. These work alongside various health sensors like blood glucose monitors or pulse monitors to observe the health of the older person.

This information is presented on a mobile-platform tablet to allow the person to see how they are keeping with life and a carer or the person’s loved ones can know what is going on if there are abnormalities. There are options in this system to help with assuring data privacy so that people only have access to this data only if they need it as part of the health-care plan for the elderly person.

Some other devices can work as part of this same equation such as the new breed of residential “smart locks” that effectively work as a business-grade access-control system for our homes. Here, they could be able to identify whether the door was locked or not and, preferably, identify whether it was locked or unlocked from inside or outside. This could, for example identify whether they got up and went outside to get the paper or mail for example thus knowing if they are well.

There can be questions raised about the use of technology as part of “ageing at home” in the context of over-monitoring the elderly population or stripping out the personal aspect of the care that is to be provided to this population. What needs to happen is that relatives and friends, along with professional carers need to engage with the older person for their health and welfare and not just have these systems monitor them for abnormalities.

 Withings – Home Page

Why Fit | Wi-Fi Networking News

WiFi-enabled bathroom scale slides into USA, overweight Yanks sluggishly back away | Engadget

My comments on this next step for the home network

When I was young, the typical kind of bathroom scales that were commonly available were of a mechanical type that needed adjustment before anyone could be weighed. As well, a person who didn’t have good eyesight couldn’t easily weigh themselves and had to require someone else to read the weight. There was a trickle of electronic scales but these were very expensive and mainly available through selected mail-order catalog stores rather than the homewares departments of a typical department store.

In the last 20 years, we have seen the arrival of cost-effective electronic bathroom scales that had a large digital display or, in some applications, voice synthesis; didn’t need to be adjusted every time each person weighed in and could allow a person with limited eyesight to weigh themselves. These units are becoming available through most homewares stores and departments.

This bathroom scales is the first unit that does more than the typical bathroom scales can do. It can measure fat mass and body mass index; but works with a Web portal that keeps record of this data for up to 8 members of a household. The data is transmitted to the portal using the WPA-secured Wi-Fi segment of your home network and is kept in a secure manner on the portal. As well, there is a local application available for the Apple iPhone / iPod Touch platform which provides the data in a manner optimised to that handheld device. But the Web dashboard can be visited through a regular Web browser setup.

From what I have seen of this device, there isn’t anything about what is involved in integrating the scales in to a secure wireless network. As far as I am concerned, these are the kind of devices that WPS-Push-Button-Connect is made for. Another thing I would like to see for these scales is an API being available so that one can write software such as integration into various desktop, network and Internet health-records programs.

As well, this has actually been the first kind of personal-health device available on the market that is able to be part of a home network. It could pave the way for more of these networked health-measurement devices to be made available for home-network use.