Design and implementation of an embedded system for monitoring at-home solitary Alzheimer's patients

Abstract

Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia cause cognitive disabilities in the afflicted person. As a result, the person with dementia often requires assistance from a primary caregiver. In this work, a system of embedded devices is presented which tracks a solitary dementia patient in the home in real-time. The system is composed of three main hardware components. Multiple passive and active sensors are strategically placed to monitor the patient. A number of custom battery-powered embedded systems read the sensors and wirelessly transmit the sensor's values. A central computational node collects the wireless transmissions and analyzes the data. Two algorithms were developed that detect the patient's eating activities and location throughout the home from the sensor data. A web-based user interface was designed that allows a primary caregiver to remotely view the patient's status while away from the home.