SBIR Phase I: Automated Monitoring and Alarming for Elder Care

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project aims to develop an automated monitoring system for the elderly staying alone at home or under nursing care. This system would enable the caregivers to remotely attend to any event or behavior trends requiring intervention. Specifically, the project seeks to develop a laboratory prototype and automated image analysis for generating behavior reports and alerts. With the elderly representing an increasing percentage of the United States population and rapid inflation in nursing home costs, it is very important to have such technologies that extend one's ability to live independently. The proposed solution is based on the use of computer vision techniques that also help in mitigating privacy concerns by not requiring videos to be transmitted to the caregiver like competing solutions. The proposed project will contribute to the research and development of new techniques for alarm generation and activity reporting using video cameras and could have a broad impact on the healthcare industry, especially for elder care. The home monitoring solution will appeal to several constituencies, including the elderly, their families, and the nursing home industry. Factors impacting adoption include the growing population of seniors, high health care expenditures, and the cost and service challenges facing the nursing home industry. The automated monitoring and alarming can potentially offer several advantages over existing monitoring products and services, such as, where subscribers press a worn or wall-mounted call button when in trouble or where they wear an accelerometer that triggers an alarm when the accelerometer notices certain patterns. The activity recognition capability developed as a result of this SBIR project will lead to quicker alerts and will mitigate privacy concerns.