Smart health vital signs from the smart home

Abstract

Dr. Skubic will describe interdisciplinary research in the Center for Eldercare and Rehabilitation Technology at the University of Missouri. Longitudinal research studies with inhome sensing systems have shown that the sensors offer new vital signs for detecting early signs of illness and functional decline. This talk will focus on in-home gait and balance as vital signs for monitoring health status. Dr. Skubic will discuss the significance of gait in tracking cognitive and physical health problems and will illustrate the capture of gait through different Smart Home sensor modalities (vision, radar, and depth images). Gait and fall alerts will be included, with case studies shown from senior homes. The talk will also include a discussion of the strategies used in this work to address research challenges such as collecting data, validating algorithms, and correlating gait parameters to health status. Finally, Dr. Skubic will discuss one approach to Closing the Loop in the form of an interactive interface to facilitate remote physical therapy.