A Medical Alert System For Emergency

The proposed product to be developed will be an inexpensive system to monitor activities ofpersons who must, or who prefer to live alone, and to alert a responsible individual on a timelybasis of potential medical emergency situations which are indicated based on this activity or lackof activity. An expert system will monitor the activity levels as well as simple user inputs suchas codes for everything is all right, leaving the house for awhile, returning from trip, etc. It willalso monitor and include telephone activity inputs as an implication of normal activity. Whenthe expert system determines abnormal activity levels it will generate a telephone call to aresponsible individual (sponsor). Such a system is significant in that (1) it can relieveovercrowding of nursing homes, (2) it will allow older people to maintain their independence andalso to be assured of receiving proper attention when it is needed. This proposal specificallyaddresses the Department of Agriculture SBIR topic 8.6, Rural and Community Development inthe area of health care. Such a system will especially benefit rural areas where the availability ofemergency health care monitoring is limited and expensive when it is available.