Automatically Assessing Movement Capabilities through a Sensor-Based Telemonitoring System

Abstract

Telemonitoring makes possible to remotely assess health status and quality of life of individuals. By acquiring heterogeneous data coming from sensors (physiological, biometric, environmental; non-invasive, adaptive and transparent to user) and data coming from other sources to become aware of user context; by inferring user behaviour and detecting anomalies from this data; and by providing elaborated and smart knowledge to clinicians, therapists, carers, families, and the patients themselves, we will be able to foster preventive, predictive and personalized care actions, decisions and support. In this paper, by relying on a novel sensor-based telemonitoring and home support system, the authors are focused on monitoring mobility activities; the ultimate goal being to automatically assess quality of life of people. In particular, the authors are aimed at answering to an item of a quality-of-life questionnaire, namely “Mobility”. Although the authors are interested in assisting disabled people, we performed preliminary experiments with a healthy user, as a proof of concept. Results show that the approach is promising. Thus, the authors are now in the process to install the final system in a number of disabled people's homes under the umbrella of the BackHome project.

Experimenting quality of life telemonitoring in a real scenario

“…[19] Solutions have been also proposed to monitor health and wellness through wearable and ambient sensors. [20,21] From the user perspective and with the goal of empower patients and, more generally, users, a lot of systems and mobile apps have been currently available to monitor mobility and/or sleep quality. The majority of them rely on wearable sensors, such as bracelets or smart-watches.…”