A Survey on Wandering Behavior Management Systems for Individuals with Dementia

Abstract

Alzheimer's and related dementia are associated with a gradual decline in cognitive abilities of an individual, impairing independent living abilities. Wandering, a purposeless disoriented locomotion tendency or behavior of dementia patients, requires constant caregiver supervision to reduce the risk of physical harm to patients. Integrating technology into care ecology has the potential to alleviate stress and expense. An automatic wandering detection system integrated with an intervention module may provide warnings and assistive suggestions in times of abnormal behavior. In this study, we survey existing research on technology aided methodologies and algorithms used in detection and management of wandering behavior of individuals affected with dementia. Our study provides insights into mechanisms of collecting movement data and finding patterns that distinguish wandering from normal behavior.

A Wandering Detection Method Based on Processing GPS Trajectories Using the Wavelet Packet Decomposition Transform for People with Cognitive Impairment

“…Depending on whether the person has wandered in or out of the home or care facility, the technique will be different. Due to the dangerous consequences of wandering in an outdoor environment, such as getting lost and accidents, wandering detection in an outdoor environment is more important [8,10]. In outdoor scenarios, a patient's locational data play the main role in the management of wandering.…”

“…With the progress of the disease and the loss of spatial and temporal memory, wandering causes irreparable damages such as mental distress for the patient and his/her caregivers and relatives, getting lost, running away, severe physical injuries, accidents, and even death [8,9]. Therefore, wandering detection and helping in emergency situations by caregivers to prevent the occurrence of irreparable accidents is one of the most important challenges for patients, their families, and their caregivers [10].…”

Intelligence Complements from the Built Environment: A Review of Cps-Enabled Smart Buildings for Cognitively Declined Occupants

“…Utilization of technologies to assist the cognitively declined people has been evaluated and summarized before. Except one review paper [8], others had different scope including partial discussions on smart homes [7,14,[24][25][26][27][28], evaluation of the usability, requirements, or issues related to the technology implementations [11,26,[29][30][31][32], assessing the treatment responses to technologies [33], evaluation of technologies for a broader range of disabilities [5,34], evaluation of technologies for wandering [24,[35][36][37], evaluation of other users such as caregivers [11,38], evaluation of specific function of smart buildings [12,39], partially discussed the services and solutions provided by the built environment [1]. The other literature review involves evaluating the developments in frameworks and sensor systems without addressing the use of CPS [8].…”

Wandering and getting lost: the architecture of an app activating local communities on dementia issues

“…As such, there is an increasing effort to conceive social and technological innovations to help people affected by dementia syndrome along with their relatives, friends, and communities [2]. Wandering, disorientation, and getting lost are common in people with dementia, even in the early stage, and there is a considerable effort to provide technological solutions aimed at alleviating the troubles related to these situations [3], [4].…”