MIMS: A Minimally Invasive Monitoring Sensor Platform

This paper describes a minimally invasive sensor platform for active and passive monitoring of human movements and physiological signals. Such a system is needed in cases where 24 × 7 monitoring is required, as in older adults with cognitive impairment, dementia and Alzheimer´s disease. The passive monitoring systems used today are useful only in detecting events after they happen; the accuracy and speed of detection is questionable. The noninvasive nature of such systems does not bring trade off benefits to early detection and prevention of emergency incidents. We compare some existing sensor platforms and present our monitoring approach using minimally invasive wearable sensor device(s). With a Minimally Invasive Monitoring Sensor (MIMS), using advanced intelligent systems, we analyze the physiological signal data preceding potential emergency events in order to predict them quickly. The Virtual Hub is the core component of MIMS, which acts as a gateway between a monitored person and her/his caregivers, as well as a shared access point between active and passive sensing devices. Some preliminary results are presented here from our sleep-related fall study using two heterogeneous sensor systems.