A pilot study carried out by Professor Ethan Berke from the Dartmouth Medical School has demonstrated that usage of mobile sensors for recording details about the mental and physical activity of senior citizens was a useful method of monitoring or tracking their health.
Health problems such as depression and dementia could be easily predicted by the changes in everyday behaviors. The two inch sensors were worn by a total of eight patients, aged 85 or more around their waists for a period of ten days. These sensors recorded details about their physical activity such as standing, walking, sitting and speaking.
The data revealed that women spent 20.7% of their time walking and were stationary for 62%, while men were stationary for 64.4% and walked for 21.3% of their time. The social interaction times were utilized to determine their mental health. The senior citizens who participated in this study also had to complete four questionnaires on friendship, depression, physical activity and health, and later this information was compared and contrasted with the data recorded by the sensors. The data recorded by the sensors were found to be consistent and in line with the questionnaire data. However, Berke stated that a large-scale and more vigorous study should be conducted for establishing the results. The pilot study could however have significant implications for future medical technology, as smart phones could be fitted for monitoring physical and mental activity.
Berke, who is also Director of the Population Health Research Center at Dartmouth revealed that if cell phones were fitted with sensors then the data so obtained could be connected to the electronic health records of the patients and thus help to provide medical professionals an objective source of data on the patient’s health. According to him this type of information would completely remove bias and recall problems which some people show while either self reporting or answering surveys. Berke further adds that these sensors could also be used by patients who were not elderly.
However, there were several issues related to the study that need to be sorted out. According to Gisele Wolf-Klein, who is the Director of Geriatric Education at North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System, the small number of patients used in the study were not enough to recommend the use of these sensors. The eight patients who had used the sensors had commented that though the sensors by themselves were easy to use, they had found the surveys to be difficult and inconvenient. A report of the study carried out by Berke, Tanzeem Choudhury, a Professor of computer science, Mashfiqui Rabbi, and Shahid Ali was published in the Annals of Family Medicine’s July/August Issue.
Source: http://dms.dartmouth.edu/