Home wireless sensing system for monitoring nighttime agitation and incontinence in patients with Alzheimer's disease

Abstract

Patients with Alzheimer's Disease (AD) often experience urinary incontinence and agitation during sleep. There is some evidence that these phenomena are related, but the relationships (and the subsequent opportunity for caregiver intervention) has never been formally studied. In this work, the relationships among the times of occurrence of nighttime agitation, sleep continuity and duration, and urinary incontinence are identified for persons with AD by using innovative, non-invasive technology. Deployments in 12 homes demonstrate both the utility of the technical monitoring system and the discovered correlations between agitation and incontinence for these 12 AD patients. Implications of possible interventions are discussed. Lessons learned for technical, non-technical and health care implications are presented.