A Cooperative Localization Technique for Tracking in Hospitals and Nursing Homes

Abstract

Nowadays numerous technologies such as WiFi, Bluetooth, cellular networks and magnetometer positioning are employed for tracking patients and assets in hospitals or nursing homes. Each of these techniques has advantages and drawbacks. For example, WiFi localization has relatively good accuracy but cannot be used in case of power outage or in the areas with poor WiFi coverage. Magnetometer positioning or cellular network does not have such problems but they are not as accurate as localization with WiFi. This paper describes technique that simultaneously employs different localization technologies for enhancing stability and average accuracy of localization. The proposed algorithm is based on fingerprinting method paired with data fusion and prediction algorithms for estimating the object location. Significant performance improvement was showed in practical scenarios.

Mobile application analysis and design with geolocation and data from hospitals near home

“…Currently, the problem that affects most people today is that of not being able to find a nearby hospital, as well as being unable to identify the specialties offered by that hospital, telephone number, hours, among others [1]. This affects the elderly population, as paradoxically, although it is one of the social groups that most needs this information, it is also the group that is most unfamiliar [2]. However, this problem does not only affect the older population, as it is also observed that in our daily lives, the majority of people do not know the location of hospitals or have erroneous information about them; this becomes even more serious if there is an emergency, since it makes it difficult to contact a transport provider rapidly [3].…”