T-c@re: A Twitter-based status monitoring system

Abstract

Japanese society is aging rapidly, which has resulted in an increasing number of elderly people who live alone. Today, the confirmation of their well-being depends on inefficient methods such as telephone calls or visits made by social workers who are increasingly overstretched and in short supply. To tackle the problem, this paper proposes “T-c@re”, a status monitoring system using Twitter. The system aims to notify local information to elderly and disabled people and monitors the health condition and safety status of them efficiently. The system is a web application using Twitter, which is accessible by any web browser on any devices connecting to the Internet. This paper also reports an operation test of the system prototype.