The home is a key environment for geriatric care. Research has demonstrated patients discharged to their homes are at a high risk of readmission of transitioning to homecare. The ability for care providers to predict and mitigate risk is limited in this environment. Significant observational requirements hinder continued diagnosis which limits timely interventions before a readmission event. Technology is used to resolve this issue and provide enhanced risk assessments by gathering data, however these technologies present a wide variety of challenges including barriers to use and ethical considerations which hinder an effective solution. This paper seeks to examine the necessary observations homecare providers require to form effective risk assessments and interventions in the home. This is
achieved by remote monitoring through Bluetooth low energy (BLE) sensors for the common causes of hospital readmissions including observed difficulties in activities of daily living (ADL), heart rate fluctuations and falls. Risk is assessed by examining these factors as events to deduce behaviour or apparent reduction in capacity to function in daily life. Results obtained when using BLE sensors, heart rate monitors and fall detectors show it is possible to observe and record events of interest to health care providers in the provision of geriatric homecare. Patterns within sensor data could be used in the home environment to form an effective patient risk analysis given
remote monitoring access to a patient and prescribed care plan to evaluate outcomes and possibility of readmission. Further experiments will test and validate the risk assessment analysis formed in this paper.
History
School
Aeronautical, Automotive, Chemical and Materials Engineering
Department
Aeronautical and Automotive Engineering
Published in
Proceedings of the 29th European Safety and Reliability Conference (ESREL 2019)
Pages
1659 - 1665
Citation
POWER, L., DUNNETT, S.J. and JACKSON, L.M., 2019. Technology assisted risk assessment in homecare. IN: Beer, M. and Zio, E. (eds). Proceedings of the 29th European Safety and Reliability Conference (ESREL 2019), Hannover, Germany, 22-26 September 2019, pp.1659-1665.