Research and Development

Bedside monitoring systems for the elderly

Beds look safe at a glance, but it not uncommon for elderly to pass away in bed suddenly. According to Cara’s survival curve, the survival rate of 50% is reached after 3 and 10 minutes of heart arrest and apnea respectively. In order to save precious lives, resuscitation has to be performed within this period. It is pretty difficult to discover an elderly patient who has suddenly had an attack within 3 to 10 minutes unless someone is watching all the time, which is quite unrealistic.

This research is to develop bedside monitoring systems for the elderly. The systems will replace a person to watch the elderly. The system architecture is basically the same as the one for peaple with dementia, but more specialized to detect emergent situations on bed such as no vital signals, struggling, no presence on bed. The system sends out an emergency warning or confirmation warning in those cases. We can capture both minute movements and larger posture information by 2 solid state image sensors such as CCD cameras. We endeavor to achieve low cost as well as ease of use for household applications.