A water supply telemonitoring system as a assistive device for the nurses and caregivers

We developed a water supply monitoring system for estimation of water intake in hospital ward. The telemonitoring system consists of an automatic water supply measurement and a remote monitoring system. Since this system uses the generic WWW facility and JAVA script, it has portability and any computer system may be used. We estimated the water intake of elderly inpatients. The volume of water was continuously measured when the patient draw water from the thermos bottle. In the preliminary study the water intake agreed with the nursing record. The results suggest that the system is accurately operated and has reliability. In addition, the system designed easy to handle both the subject monitored and the observers. Although this system is very simple, it may effective not only to save the time in both nurses and caregivers but to improve clinical care.