Monitoring Vital Signs and Movement Using Contactless Sensors: Building a Home of the Future

TL;DR

This paper describes a home monitoring system using wireless sensors to track health and movement, aiming to support aging in place while protecting privacy.

Contribution

The novel contribution is a privacy-preserving, multi-modal home monitoring system with ultra-wideband sensors and HIPAA-compliant data handling for aging populations.

Findings

A home monitoring system was developed and stress-tested for over 10 months with <1% data loss.

19 volunteer sessions were conducted to refine the app and protocol before post-stroke data collection.

The system tracks vital signs, movement, and activities of daily living in real-time.

Abstract

As Americans live longer, there is a growing need to develop and implement technologies to monitor changes in health, supporting aging in place. We have installed privacy-preserving ultra-wideband wireless sensors in a model home to facilitate sensor and algorithm development for future home deployment. These sensors monitor vital signs and provide localization/tracking and activity recognition. We have developed a protocol to continuously collect and measure activities of daily living, location, and gait. We developed a multi-modal app using videos, audio, and texts to guide individuals and track activity completion time. To protect data privacy, raw sensor data is sent to a research cloud, and identifiable image data is sent to a university-supported HIPAA-compliant Box app. We spent >10 months developing, evaluating, stress testing, and improving our system and cloud infrastructure stability to ensure <1% data loss. We completed 19 sessions with volunteers to test our app and protocol, provide feedback, and continue to update our procedures and app before beginning data collection with individuals post-stroke. Recovery progress in post-stroke study participants will complete 3 study visits over 14 weeks to capture clinical and sensor measurements. We continue to refine our home deployment protocols for older adults with diverse technological knowledge. This presentation highlights our progress in developing and deploying our home monitoring system. We will discuss the challenges and procedures to collect, analyze, and interpret continuous physiologic and movement data in real-time, providing information, knowledge, and insights that will become vital to supporting the health of our expanding aging population.