Quantifying Activity Levels of Community-Dwelling Seniors Through Beacon Monitoring

Abstract

The ageing population is rapidly increasing, both in Singapore and worldwide. Due to the shortage of healthcare professionals and institutionalized care, there is a pertinent need for seniors to age-in-place - safely and in the familiarity of their neighborhoods. In addition, changing family structures and rising divorce rates, coupled with the desire for more personal space and independence, have resulted in a significant proportion of seniors who live alone at home. In this paper, we describe a scalable and low-cost monitoring system that can help to identify community-dwelling seniors who are at risk of social isolation and/or frailty. This is achieved by monitoring the seniors' activity levels (which are computed based on the timings and durations that seniors spend in their residential homes), through the use of Bluetooth beacons and the seniors' smartphones. The system has been implemented and deployed in 81 residential homes, over a period of 3 weeks. Preliminary results show that the system can provide a low-cost and efficient way of providing caregivers with insights on each senior's well-being, based on his/her activity levels.