A Spectral-Based Approach for BCG Signal Content Classification.

This paper has two objectives: the first is to generate two binary flags to indicate useful frames permitting the measurement of cardiac and respiratory rates from Ballistocardiogram (BCG) signals-in fact, human body activities during measurements can disturb the BCG signal content, leading to difficulties in vital sign measurement; the second objective is to achieve refined BCG signal segmentation according to these activities. The proposed framework makes use of two approaches: an unsupervised classification based on the Gaussian Mixture Model (GMM) and a supervised classification based on K-Nearest Neighbors (KNN). Both of these approaches consider two spectral features, namely the Spectral Flatness Measure (SFM) and Spectral Centroid (SC), determined during the feature extraction step. Unsupervised classification is used to explore the content of the BCG signals, justifying the existence of different classes and permitting the definition of useful hyper-parameters for effective segmentation. In contrast, the considered supervised classification approach aims to determine if the BCG signal content allows the measurement of the heart rate (HR) and the respiratory rate (RR) or not. Furthermore, two levels of supervised classification are used to classify human-body activities into many realistic classes from the BCG signal (e.g., coughing, holding breath, air expiration, movement, et al.). The first one considers frame-by-frame classification, while the second one, aiming to boost the segmentation performance, transforms the frame-by-frame SFM and SC features into temporal series which track the temporal variation of the measures of the BCG signal. The proposed approach constitutes a novelty in this field and represents a powerful method to segment BCG signals according to human body activities, resulting in an accuracy of 94.6%.

A New Approach for Detecting Sleep Apnea Using a Contactless Bed Sensor: Comparison Study.

BACKGROUND: At present, there is an increased demand for accurate and personalized patient monitoring because of the various challenges facing health care systems. For instance, rising costs and lack of physicians are two serious problems affecting the patient's care. Nonintrusive monitoring of vital signs is a potential solution to close current gaps in patient monitoring. As an example, bed-embedded ballistocardiogram (BCG) sensors can help physicians identify cardiac arrhythmia and obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) nonintrusively without interfering with the patient's everyday activities. Detecting OSA using BCG sensors is gaining popularity among researchers because of its simple installation and accessibility, that is, their nonwearable nature. In the field of nonintrusive vital sign monitoring, a microbend fiber optic sensor (MFOS), among other sensors, has proven to be suitable. Nevertheless, few studies have examined apnea detection. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to assess the capabilities of an MFOS for nonintrusive vital signs and sleep apnea detection during an in-lab sleep study. Data were collected from patients with sleep apnea in the sleep laboratory at Khoo Teck Puat Hospital. METHODS: In total, 10 participants underwent full polysomnography (PSG), and the MFOS was placed under the patient's mattress for BCG data collection. The apneic event detection algorithm was evaluated against the manually scored events obtained from the PSG study on a minute-by-minute basis. Furthermore, normalized mean absolute error (NMAE), normalized root mean square error (NRMSE), and mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) were employed to evaluate the sensor capabilities for vital sign detection, comprising heart rate (HR) and respiratory rate (RR). Vital signs were evaluated based on a 30-second time window, with an overlap of 15 seconds. In this study, electrocardiogram and thoracic effort signals were used as references to estimate the performance of the proposed vital sign detection algorithms. RESULTS: For the 10 patients recruited for the study, the proposed system achieved reasonable results compared with PSG for sleep apnea detection, such as an accuracy of 49.96% (SD 6.39), a sensitivity of 57.07% (SD 12.63), and a specificity of 45.26% (SD 9.51). In addition, the system achieved close results for HR and RR estimation, such as an NMAE of 5.42% (SD 0.57), an NRMSE of 6.54% (SD 0.56), and an MAPE of 5.41% (SD 0.58) for HR, whereas an NMAE of 11.42% (SD 2.62), an NRMSE of 13.85% (SD 2.78), and an MAPE of 11.60% (SD 2.84) for RR. CONCLUSIONS: Overall, the recommended system produced reasonably good results for apneic event detection, considering the fact that we are using a single-channel BCG sensor. Conversely, satisfactory results were obtained for vital sign detection when compared with the PSG outcomes. These results provide preliminary support for the potential use of the MFOS for sleep apnea detection.

Pilot Site Deployment of an IoT Solution for Older Adults' Early Behavior Change Detection.

The world demography is continuously changing. During the last decade, we noticed a regular variation in the world demography leading to a nearly balanced society share between the young and aging population. This increasing older adult population is facing many problems. In fact, the transition to the aging period is associated with physical, psychological, cognitive, and societal changes. Negative behavior changes are considered as indicators of older adults' frailty. This is why it is important to detect such behavior changes early in order to prevent isolation, sedentary lifestyle, and even diseases, and therefore delay the frailty period. This paper exhibits a proof-of-concept pilot site deployment of an Internet of Thing (IoT) solution for the continuous monitoring and detection of older adults' behavior changes. The objective is to help geriatricians detect sedentary lifestyle and health-related problems at an early stage.

Contactless remote monitoring of sleep: evaluating the feasibility of an under-mattress sensor mat in a real-life deployment.

Sleep is so important, particularly for the elderly. The lack of sleep may increase the risk of cognitive decline. Similarly, it may also increase the risk of Alzheimer's disease. Nonetheless, many people underestimate the importance of getting enough rest and sleep. In-laboratory polysomnography is the gold-standard method for assessing the quality of sleep. This method is considered impractical in the clinical environment, seen as labour-intensive and expensive owing to its specialised equipment, leading to long waiting lists. Hence, user-friendly (remote and non-intrusive) devices are being developed to help patients monitor their sleep at home. In this paper, we first discuss commercially-available non-wearable devices that measure sleep, in which we highlight the features associated with each device, including sensor type, interface, outputs, dimensions, power supply, and connectivity. Second, we evaluate the feasibility of a non-wearable device in a free-living environment. The deployed device comprises a sensor mat with an integrated micro-bending multimode fibre. Raw sensor data were gathered from five senior participants living in a senior activity centre over a few to several weeks. We were able to analyse the participants' sleep quality using various sleep parameters deduced from the sensor mat. These parameters include the wake-up time, bedtime, the time in bed, nap time. Vital signs, namely heart rate, respiratory rate, and body movements, were also reported to detect abnormal sleep patterns. We have employed pre-and post-surveys reporting each volunteer's sleep hygiene to confirm the proposed system's outcomes for detecting the various sleep parameters. The results of the system were strongly correlated with the surveys for reporting each sleep parameter. Furthermore, the system proved to be highly effective in detecting irregular patterns that occurred during sleep.

IoT in medical diagnosis: detecting excretory functional disorders for Older adults via bathroom activity change using unobtrusive IoT technology.

The Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are promising technologies that can help make the health system more efficient, which concurrently can be particularly useful to help maintain a high quality of life for older adults, especially in light of healthcare staff shortage. Many health issues are challenging to manage both by healthcare staff and policymakers. They have a negative impact on older adults and their families and are an economic burden to societies around the world. This situation is particularly critical for older adults, a population highly vulnerable to diseases that needs more consideration and care. It is, therefore, crucial to improve diagnostic and management as well as proposed prevention strategies to enhance the health and quality of life of older adults. In this study, we focus on detecting symptoms in early stages of diseases to prevent the deterioration of older adults' health and avoid complications. We focus on digestive and urinary system disorders [mainly the Urinary Tract Infection (UTI) and the Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS)] that are known to affect older adult populations and that are detrimental to their health and quality of life. Our proposed approach relies on unobtrusive IoT and change point detections algorithms to help follow older adults' health status daily. The approach monitors long-term behavior changes and detects possible changes in older adults' behavior suggesting early onsets or symptoms of IBS and UTI. We validated our approach with medical staff reports and IoT data collected in the residence of 16 different older adults during periods ranging from several months to a few years. Results are showing that our proposed approach can detect changes associated to symptoms of UTI and IBS, which were confirmed with observations and testimonies from the medical staff.

Adapting Transportation Planning e-Tools to Older Adults' Needs: Scoping Review.

BACKGROUND: Aging is often accompanied by a decrease in physical and sensory capacities and financial resources, which makes travel and the use of public transport a big challenge for older adults. These mobility limitations may prevent them from going out for groceries, medical appointments, or entertainment, which increases the risk of social isolation. A key element in helping older adults to maintain healthy aging and social engagement is to foster autonomy, freedom, and active mobility. A transportation planning e-tool can provide older adults with information about transport and trip options. There are many transportation planning e-tools, but little is known about whether and how their characteristics and functionalities address older adults' needs and preferences. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to map existing transportation e-tools and identify gaps to be filled in order to match their functionalities with older adults' needs and preferences. METHODS: A scoping review of existing transportation planning e-tools was conducted based on the approach developed by Arksey and O'Malley. A search in the scientific literature (Academic Search Complete, MEDLINE, CINAHL, SocINDEX, and ERIC) as well as gray literature (TRID Database, Google Scholar, Proquest, Google Play, etc) was conducted in June 2020 and updated 3 times; in September 2021, December 2021, and May 2022. After the studies were selected, a comparative analysis was performed by 2 evaluators; an occupational therapy student and a computer science student. These e-tools were analyzed with respect to some characteristics (eg, tool's development status, target customers, and geographic coverage) as well as 10 functionalities (time autonomy, walkability, crowd avoidance, incline avoidance, weather consideration, dark avoidance, winter obstacles avoidance, amenities inclusion, taxi driver's information, and support affordance) that we defined based on older adults' needs and preferences (mainly Canadians). These needs were identified from a literature review and confirmed by workshops (focus groups). RESULTS: The scientific and gray literature search yielded 463 sources, and 42 transportation e-tools were included. None of the e-tools reviewed addresses all 10 functionalities. More specifically, functionalities such as dark avoidance and support affordance were not addressed by any of the included e-tools. CONCLUSIONS: Most of the e-tools currently available to plan trips do not address older adults' needs and preferences. The results of this scoping review helped fill this gap by identifying functionalities to include in transportation planning e-tools designed to promote active aging. The findings of this study highlight the need to use a multicriteria optimization algorithm to address older adults' mobility needs and preferences. INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPORT IDENTIFIER (IRRID): RR2-10.2196/33894.

Design and ergonomic evaluation of a new adapted endoscope holder to reduce muscle pressure and discomfort during endoscopy.

BACKGROUND: Laparoscopic surgeons who regularly perform endoscopy are more likely to develop musculoskeletal disorders than other internal medicine specialists, a difference that attributed to repetitive movements, poor postures, and sub-optimal equipment design. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to design, build, and evaluate an endoscope holder for reducing the static load applied by the weight of the endoscope, in order to reduce musculoskeletal disorders risk factors in the surgeon's hand, shoulder and back issues regions. METHODS: A new endoscope holder was designed according to ergonomic design principles. The designed holder was evaluated by surface electromyography (sEMG) and discomfort assessment including 15 laparoscopic surgeons. The results were analyzed with centrality statistics and compared with the independent t-test using SPSS version 22. RESULTS: The evaluation of the new endoscope holder shows a statistical significant decrease in the average electrical activity of biceps brachii, triceps brachii, lateral deltoid, T9 Thoracic erector spinae, L4 Lumbar erector spinae, and external oblique after using the holder (p < 0.05). CONCLUSION: The results shows that using the new endoscope holder is associated with a lower level of discomfort, as well as a lower induced muscle activity. The results also highlight the need to upgrade the holder to offer rotability in all directions (perpendicular to the ground) which will be included in the next design.

Ambient intelligence governance review: from service-oriented to self-service.

The current generation of connected devices and the Internet of Things augment people's capabilities through ambient intelligence. Ambient Intelligence (AmI) support systems contain applications consuming available services in the environment to serve users. A well-known design of these applications follows a service architecture style and implement artificial intelligence mechanisms to maintain an awareness of the context: The service architecture style enables the distribution of capabilities and facilitates interoperability. Intelligence and context-awareness provide an adaptation of the environment to improve the interaction. Smart objects in distributed deployments and the increasing machine awareness of devices and people context also lead us to architectures, including self-governed policies providing self-service. We have systematically reviewed and analyzed ambient system governance considering service-oriented architecture (SOA) as a reference model. We applied a systematic mapping process obtaining 198 papers for screening (out of 712 obtained after conducting searches in research databases). We then reviewed and categorized 68 papers related to 48 research projects selected by fulfilling ambient intelligence and SOA principles and concepts. This paper presents the result of our analysis, including the existing governance designs, the distribution of adopted characteristics, and the trend to incorporate service in the context-aware process. We also discuss the identified challenges and analyze research directions.

Developing a One-Stop Platform Transportation Planning Service to Help Older Adults Move Around in Their Community Where, When, and How They Wish: Protocol for a Living Lab Study.

BACKGROUND:  Multiple mobility-related challenges frequently appear with aging. As a result, many older adults have difficulty getting around, to go, for example, to doctors' appointments or leisure activities. Although various means of transportation are currently available, older adults do not necessarily use them, partly because they do not know which ones are adapted to their needs and preferences. To foster older adults' autonomy and freedom in their decision-making about transportation, it is crucial to help them make informed decisions about the means that suit them best. OBJECTIVE: Our aim is to develop Mobilainés, a one-stop platform transportation planning service combining different transport modes and services to help older adults move around in their community where, when, and how they wish. More specifically, we aim to (1) define older adults' mobility needs and preferences in order to conceptualize a one-stop platform; (2) cocreate a prototype of the one-stop platform; and (3) test the prototype with users in a real-life context. METHODS: This ongoing study uses a "Living Lab" co-design approach. This approach differs from traditional research on aging by facilitating intersectoral knowledge sharing and innovative solutions by and with older adults themselves. A steering committee of 8 stakeholders from the public, scientific, and private sectors, as well as older citizens, will meet quarterly throughout the study. The design comprises three phases, each with several iterative subphases. Phase 1 is exploration: through co-design workshops and literature reviews, members of the intersectoral committee will define older adults' mobility needs and preferences to support the conceptualization of the one-stop platform. Phase 2 is experimentation: 4 personas will be produced that reflect the different needs and preferences of typical older adult end users of the platform; for development of a prototype, scenarios and mockups (static designs of the web application) will be created through co-design sessions with older adults (N=12) embodying these personas. Phase 3 is evaluation: we will test the usability of the prototype and document changes in mobility, such as the ability to move around satisfactorily and to participate in meaningful activities, by and with older adults (N=30) who use the prototype. The steering committee will identify ways to support the adoption, implementation, and scaling up of Mobilainés to ensure its sustainability. Qualitative and quantitative data will be triangulated according to each subphase objective. RESULTS:  The first phase began in September 2019. The study is scheduled for completion by mid-2023. CONCLUSIONS:  This innovative transportation planning service will merge existing transportation options in one place. By meeting a wide variety of older adults' needs and preferences, Mobilainés will help them feel comfortable and safe when moving around, which should increase their participation in meaningful activities and reduce the risk of social isolation. INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPORT IDENTIFIER (IRRID): DERR1-10.2196/33894.

Ballistocardiogram signal processing: a review.

Across the world, healthcare costs are projected to continue to increase, and the pressure on the healthcare system is only going to grow in intensity as the rate of growth of elderly population increases in the coming decades. As an example, when people age one possible condition that they may experience is sleep-disordered breathing (SDB). SDB, better known as the obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) syndrome, and associated cardiovascular complications are among the most common clinical disorders. The gold-standard approach to accurately diagnose OSA, is polysomnography (PSG), a test that should be performed in a specialist sleep clinic and requires a complete overnight stay at the clinic. The PSG system can provide accurate and real-time data; however, it introduces several challenges such as complexity, invasiveness, excessive cost, and absence of privacy. Technological advancements in hardware and software enable noninvasive and unobtrusive sensing of vital signs. An alternative approach which may help diagnose OSA and other cardiovascular diseases is the ballistocardiography. The ballistocardiogram (BCG) signal captures the ballistic forces of the heart caused by the sudden ejection of blood into the great vessels with each heartbeat, breathing, and body movement. In recent years, BCG sensors such as polyvinylidene fluoride film-based sensors, electromechanical films, strain Gauges, hydraulic sensors, microbend fiber-optic sensors as well as fiber Bragg grating sensors have been integrated within ambient locations such as mattresses, pillows, chairs, beds, or even weighing scales, to capture BCG signals, and thereby measure vital signs. Analysis of the BCG signal is a challenging process, despite being a more convenient and comfortable method of vital signs monitoring. In practice, BCG sensors are placed under bed mattresses for sleep tracking, and hence several factors, e.g., mattress thickness, body movements, motion artifacts, bed-partners, etc. can deteriorate the signal. In this paper, we introduce the sensors that are being used for obtaining BCG signals. We also present an in-depth review of the signal processing methods as applied to the various sensors, to analyze the BCG signal and extract physiological parameters such heart rate and breathing rate, as well as determining sleep stages. Besides, we recommend which methods are more suitable for processing BCG signals due to their nonlinear and nonstationary characteristics.