Towards long-term mobility tracking in NTU hospital´s elder care center

Growth of the elder population gives rise to the increasing demand of long-term elder-care facilities. Most elders living in such facilities suffer from multiple chronic illnesses. Accompanying these illnesses are slow declines of the elders´ physical and mental health. Continuous tracking of the elders´ daily activities is required to detect the declines early. To facilitate long-term mobility tracking of the elders, we investigate, in this work, the potential of a WSN-based indoor location system as a support for the already-overloaded nursing staff. Through the deployment of a WSN-based Real-Time Indoor Location System (WSN-RTLS) in the university hospital´s elder care center for 8 months, we find that: (1) each elder´s daily mobility shows a reoccurring pattern. The pattern, however, differs from individual to individual. (2) The mobility level shows a significant variability, i.e., not all elders show reoccurring patterns in mobility levels. These suggest that mere quantity of how much the elders move around the facility will not be a suitable target for behavioral modeling. Exact location of the elders´ presence, rather, is more relevant. Insitu WSN-RTLSs would be an enabler towards early detection of the elders´ physical or mental decline.