Monitoring dressing activity failures through RFID and video.

BACKGROUND: Monitoring and evaluation of Activities of Daily Living in general, and dressing activity in particular, is an important indicator in the evaluation of the overall cognitive state of patients. In addition, the effectiveness of therapy in patients with motor impairments caused by a stroke, for example, can be measured through long-term monitoring of dressing activity. However, automatic monitoring of dressing activity has not received significant attention in the current literature. OBJECTIVES: Considering the importance of monitoring dressing activity, the main goal of this work was to investigate the possibility of recognizing dressing activities and automatically identifying common failures exhibited by patients suffering from motor or cognitive impairments. METHODS: The system developed for this purpose comprised analysis of RFID (radio frequency identification) tracking and computer vision processing. Eleven test subjects, not connected to the research, were recruited and asked to perform the dressing task by choosing any combination of clothes without further assistance. Initially the test subjects performed correct dressing and then they were free to choose from a set of dressing failures identified from the current research literature. RESULTS: The developed system was capable of automatically recognizing common dressing failures. In total, there were four dressing failures observed for upper garments and three failures for lower garments, in addition to recognizing successful dressing. The recognition rate for identified dressing failures was between 80% and 100%. CONCLUSIONS: We developed a robust system to monitor the dressing activity. Given the importance of monitoring the dressing activity as an indicator of both cognitive and motor skills the system allows for the possibility of long term tracking and continuous evaluation of the dressing task. Long term monitoring can be used in rehabilitation and cognitive skills evaluation.

Pervasive healthcare: paving the way for a pervasive, user-centered and preventive healthcare model.

OBJECTIVES: The aging of the population creates pressure on the healthcare systems in various ways. A massive increase of chronic disease conditions and age-related illness are predicted as the dominant forces driving the future health care. The objective of this paper is to present future research demands in pervasive healthcare with the goal to meet the healthcare challenges by paving the way for a pervasive, user-centered and preventive healthcare model. METHODS: This paper presents recent methodological approaches and proposes future research topics in three areas: i) pervasive, continuous and reliable long-term monitoring systems; ii) prevention through pervasive technology as a key element to maintain lifelong wellness; and iii) design and evaluation methods for ubiquitous, patient-centric technologies. RESULTS: Pervasive technology has been identified as a strong asset for achieving the vision of user-centered preventive healthcare. In order to make this vision a reality, new strategies for design, development and evaluation of technology have to find a common denominator and consequently interoperate. Moreover, the potential of pervasive healthcare technologies offers new opportunities beyond traditional disease treatment and may play a major role in prevention, e.g. motivate healthy behavior and disease prevention throughout all stages of life. In this sense, open challenges in future research have to be addressed such as the variability of health indicators between individuals and the manner in which relevant health indicators are provided to the users in order to maximize their motivation to mitigate or prevent unhealthy behaviors. Additionally, collecting evidence that pervasive technology improves health is seen as one of the toughest challenges. Promising approaches are recently introduced, such as "clinical proof-of-concept" and balanced observational studies. CONCLUSIONS: The paper concludes that pervasive healthcare will enable a paradigm shift from the established centralized healthcare model to a pervasive, user-centered and preventive overall lifestyle health management. In order to provide these new opportunities everywhere, anytime and to anyone, future research in the fields of pervasive sensing, pervasive prevention and evaluation of pervasive technology is inevitably needed.