A battery-less and wireless wearable sensor system for identifying bed and chair exits in a pilot trial in hospitalized older people

PLoS One. 2017 Oct 9;12(10):e0185670. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0185670. eCollection 2017.

Abstract

Falls in hospitals are common, therefore strategies to minimize the impact of these events in older patients and needs to be examined. In this pilot study, we investigate a movement monitoring sensor system for identifying bed and chair exits using a wireless wearable sensor worn by hospitalized older patients. We developed a movement monitoring sensor system that recognizes bed and chair exits. The system consists of a machine learning based activity classifier and a bed and chair exit recognition process based on an activity score function. Twenty-six patients, aged 71 to 93 years old, hospitalized in the Geriatric Evaluation and Management Unit participated in the supervised trials. They wore over their attire a battery-less, lightweight and wireless sensor and performed scripted activities such as getting off the bed and chair. We investigated the system performance in recognizing bed and chair exits in hospital rooms where RFID antennas and readers were in place. The system's acceptability was measured using two surveys with 0-10 likert scales. The first survey measured the change in user perception of the system before and after a trial; the second survey, conducted only at the end of each trial, measured user acceptance of the system based on a multifactor sensor acceptance model. The performance of the system indicated an overall recall of 81.4%, precision of 66.8% and F-score of 72.4% for joint bed and chair exit recognition. Patients demonstrated improved perception of the system after use with overall score change from 7.8 to 9.0 and high acceptance of the system with score ≥ 6.7 for all acceptance factors. The present pilot study suggests the use of wireless wearable sensors is feasible for detecting bed and chair exits in a hospital environment.

MeSH terms

  • Aged
  • Aged, 80 and over
  • Female
  • Geriatric Assessment
  • Hospitals
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Monitoring, Physiologic*
  • Pilot Projects
  • Surveys and Questionnaires
  • Walking / physiology*
  • Wireless Technology*

Grants and funding

Financial support for this study was provided in part by a grant from the Hospital Research Foundation (THRF) in South Australia (not-for-profit foundation), (http://hospitalresearch.com.au) received by DR and in part by a grant from the Australian Research Council (ARC) - grant number DP130104614 (Government of Australia) - (http://www.arc.gov.au) received by DR. The funding agreement ensured the authors’ independence in designing the study, interpreting the data, writing, and publishing the report. The funders had no role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.