AMACS

The ultimate goal of this project is to allow elderly people presenting age-related risks or pathologies (e.g. risk of fall, cognitive decline) to safely stay in their home environment as long as possible.

Objectives

In order to achieve so, AMACS will develop and evaluate in real-life situation an ICT-based system that can automatically monitor the activities of daily living (ADLs) of elderly people living alone at home. Some examples of such activities are: sleeping, cooking, making a phone call, visiting the toilets, washing… The monitoring is based on measurements of various contactless sensors that are installed in the elder’s home environment: home security sensors (presence or motion detectors), sensors that measure the consumption of public utilities (electricity, water, gas) and video cameras. By real-life situation, we mean that our prototype will be developed and evaluated based on the measurements done in the living quarters of a few seniors.
With the monitoring of ADLs, we want to detect changes in the senior’s behavior, i.e. changes in the ADL patterns. These changes include both acute and gradual changes. Acute changes are abnormal events that are critical and require an immediate alarm. Examples of such abnormal events include, for instance, fall incidents, water or gas that keeps running. On the other hand, we also want to detect gradual changes. These changes are important for an early detection of health problems (such as the detection of early stages of dementia). Examples of such changes are sleeping disorders, ADL decline and behavioral disturbances. The information about these activities and changes in seniors’ behavior can then be presented to the seniors, their medical records and their caregivers (general practitioners, visiting nurses, other health professionals, family members) to adapt elderly people’s care plans, and as a consequence, increase their quality of care and quality of life. Hence, it will also allow them to stay longer at their homes.
CETIC together with the other Walloon partners is in charge of the definition, design and development of the exchange platform which collects the information about ADLs and changes in seniors’ behavior and adequately communicate this information to the seniors, their medical records and their caregivers (including the general practitioner and the visiting nurse). They will also implement the adaptations of software solutions used by the general practitioner and the nurse to take into account this extra information.

Results

So far, CETIC and the other Walloon partners have defined the functional and non functional specifications of the exchange platform and of its interfaces to the softwares used by the general practitioner and the nurse to take into account this extra information.
Some modules of the exchange platform have also been implemented: the database (containing the contacts, incidents, ADLs…), the messaging module which enables the different users to exchange e-mail messages, the communication module that manages the sending and reception of alerts, the module that generates ADL reports for the general practitioner.

Added Values for Business

First of all, the project results can be of interest for companies providing ICT services in the healthcare sector and in particular those proposing health telemonitoring systems. They could extend their product portfolio with solutions based on video cameras, security sensors and sensors measuring the consumption of public utilities.
The project results can also be interesting for SMEs active in sectors like energy management, comfort management and domotica/home automation. These sectors indeed use sensors that are similar to the ones that are used in this project and could thus extend their activities to the healthcare market.
Concerning the Walloon project partners - Intersysto, PCSOL and Smolinfo – they are SMEs active in ehealth-related solutions. Each of these SMEs currently sells a product dedicated to one domain (medics, patients, paramedics) and would extend them by interfacing it with ADL events.

Project datasheet