Intelligent Biosensors to Monitor Seniors Movements

An Oregon Health & Science University professor recently received $300,000 from Intel Corporation to create new ways of using sensing technology to detect cognitive impairment and dementia in elderly adults. The technology may someday help seniors maintain their cognitive abilities and provide added peace of mind for family members worried about their loved one’s health and well-being.

Misha Pavel, Ph.D., a professor in OHSU’s OGI School of Science & Engineering, is the principal investigator of the three-year study that includes a multidisciplinary group of OHSU researchers. Pavel, Jeffrey Kaye, Ph.D., professor of neurology in the OHSU School of Medicine, and director of the Layton Aging and Alzheimer’s Disease Center at OHSU and the Portland VA Medical Center, and their team will use simple, intelligent biosensors to continuously and unobtrusively monitor seniors’ movements. Early studies will be conducted at Elite Care, a private senior home in Milwaukie, Ore., and at Calaroga Terrace Retirement Community in northeast Portland.

During the study, the intelligent sensors — equipped with sophisticated information processing and communication capabilities — will be located in areas common to seniors, as well as within infrared badges worn by the Elite Care seniors involved.

“The sensors will constantly and quietly relay information to a computer that can help us reliably determine the regular movement of each senior within the project,” said Pavel, an experimental psychologist in the OGI school’s Department of Biomedical Engineering. “For example, if a senior who never takes a walk suddenly leaves the building, the sensor may be invaluable in alerting caregivers to a subtle, but important cognitive change, as well as avert a potential danger in the senior getting lost or harmed.”

Pavel and his colleagues, with support from Portland, Ore.-based Spry Learning, also plan to develop and test a variety of easy-to-use computer games with Calaroga residents to monitor trends in cognitive function over time, and enhance and maintain a defined set of cognitive capabilities.

Pavel is testing his sensors, systems and algorithms in a lab on the Hillsboro, Ore., campus designed to look like a senior’s living area. For example, the lab has a chair that can sense someone sitting on it and a bed that monitors a person’s movements and sleeping positions — information that may eventually provide clues to a senior’s safety and well-being. Motion detectors are positioned throughout the “living area” of Pavel’s lab to track seniors’ comings and goings.

Pavel hopes additional funding down the road will enable him to coordinate field tests with seniors still living in single-family homes.
Though research into intelligent biosensors is a growing field, this is the only known study focusing on biosensors for home health care.

Older adults are at high risk for cognitive impairment and dementia. Dementia occurs in 10 percent to 16 percent of seniors older than 75 and in up to 50 percent of those 85 or older. For people with mild cognitive impairment (for example, significant memory loss, but not dementia), the risk of developing dementia is as high as 50 percent within five years of being diagnosed. Unless physicians and other health care providers are alert to cognitive changes in their elderly patients, many cases of dementia will go undetected, which can lead to seniors getting lost, falling or failing to get treatment.

According to the U.S. Healthcare Financing Administration, home care is the largest growing segment of health care. Experts believe that care for the elderly will increasingly be provided in homes and in low-skill care facilities as opposed to institutions.

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