Frailty detection of older adults by monitoring their daily routine

International audienceDifferent approaches have been proposed in the literature to detect the frailty of an elderly person. In this paper, we propose a solution for detecting the frailty of older adults based on the monitoring of activities of daily living (ADL). The elderly's daily routine, is characterized by indexes determined by depth sensors such as the percentage of time in the lying position, the percentage of time in a sitting position during the day, the number of falls, the number of visits, the number of outing, and the walking speed. These indexes are intended to be an indication of frailty. Measuring frailty is difficult and requires data collection over several months. In this communication, we hypothesize that the elderly person organizes the daily life around their environment, behavior or social relations and has a well-defined routine life and we use a model to simulate the routine (normal) or non-routine (abnormal) day, according to the variance of frailty indexes over a six-month period. The classification of the type of the days (normal/ abnormal) for two different databases to lead to an accuracy of 99% and 100%. A patient is considered frail when the weekly percentage of maintaining routine decreases steadily. © 2020 IEEE

Device Attitude and Real-Time 3D Visualization: An Interface for Elderly Care

International audienceObjective: this paper presents an innovative graphical user interface to visualize the attitude of a sensing device in a three-dimensional space, serving a wide-range of medical applications. Material and methods: based on inertial measurement units (IMU) or on magnetic, angular rate and gravity (MARG) sensors, a processing unit provides Euler angles using a sensor fusion technique to display the orientation of the device relative to the Earth frame in real-time. The device is schematized by linking six polygonal regions, and is subject to sequential rotations by updating the graph each 350 ms. We conduct comparative studies between the two sensing devices, i.e. IMUs and MARGs, as well as two orientation filters, namely Madgwick's algorithm and Mahony's algorithm. Results: the accuracy of the system is reported as a function of (i) the sampling frequency, (ii) the sensing unit, and (iii) the orientation filter, following two elderly care applications, namely fall risk assessment and body posture monitoring. The experiments are conducted using public datasets. The corresponding results show that Madgwick's algorithm is best suited for low sampling rates, whereas MARG sensors are best suited for the detection of postural transitions. Conclusion: this paper addresses the different aspects and discusses the limitations of attitude estimation systems, which are important tools to help clinicians in their diagnosis

A Priori Acceptability of a Multimodal System for the Early Detection of Frailty in Older Adults

International audienceIntroduction: Frailty would affect 4 out of 5 people aged of 85 and over in France. Methods: As part of a global project aimed to develop a multimodal system for the early detection of frailty among older adults living at home or in independent senior living apartments, we reported prospective quantitative study assessing a priori acceptability of this system based on Bel's integrative model devoted to the behavioral prediction use of an unknown technology. The platform is composed of 5 devices: a weight scale, a tensiometer, a wrist-worn step counter, an activity tracker and a tablet to exchange data with the aforementioned sensors over the internet. The inclusion criteria are: age 2: 80 years old, living at home or in independent senior living apartments, assessed as ‘robust’ or ‘pre-frail’. The a priori acceptability is assessed through self-evaluation questionnaires, mainly using a continuous scale (min-max score 1-7). Results: We included 34 volunteers (24 women and 10 men), mean age 85.6 years (± 4.1), 24 of whom were classified as ‘robust’ and 10 as ‘pre-frail’. A priori utility of the multimodal system (mean score = 6.0 (± 0.9)), a priori intention of use (mean score = 5.9 (± 0.8)) and the rate of recommendation of the device before its first use (82.4% (± 17.4)) were clearly in favor of the device. Conclusion: This study is in favor of an a priori acceptability and an a priori intention to use rather favorable to the developing system. Those results point a need for significant ease of use and almost-perfect functioning of this connected system for good acceptability