Currently, the European Microsoft Innovation Center (EMIC) is starting the project EMERGE, supporting elderly people with innovative emergency monitoring and prevention.
Delayed calls of emergency medical services - in case of physical or mental disorders resulting from strokes or falls, for example - lead to increased hospitalization and movement of elderly people into nursing homes. This decreases their quality of life unnecessarily and causes considerable costs. Because of demographic changes in Europe, this situation is expected to get worse in the future.
This problem is addressed in EMERGE by supporting elderly people with innovative emergency monitoring and prevention. Humans are bio-psycho-social beings, whose character is to follow typical behavior. Especially elderly people have this character. The innovation is to algorithm this behavior by a holistic approach to detect deviations from typical behavior patterns and to reason on acute disorders in their health condition in case of strokes, falls, or other similar emergencies.
The approach is to use ambient and unobtrusive sensors to monitor activity, location, and vital data. Daily routines are tracked to detect abnormalities and create early indicators for potential emergencies.
EMERGE engineers a prototypical solution that treats emergencies with stepwise assistance. First, it provides early proactive assistance to the elderly themselves.
In the case of an emergency that cannot be handled in the first two steps, an integrated emergency medical service (EMS) is called and informed about the case and the personal situation of the affected person. The integrated EMS can resolve the situation through medical care, telemedicine counseling, activation of social services, or sending a rescue team.
The impact of the developed prototypical solution on quality of life will be measured in an Assisted Living Laboratory and a multinational site evaluation. It is expected that EMERGE will help elderly people to live a safer, self-determined life and stay longer in their preferred environment.
The European Microsoft Innovation Center (EMIC) is leveraging and pushing its work in the Sensor and Context Management technology area. European Microsoft Innovation Center's Sensor Abstraction Layer (SAL) will be the central hub let applications and higher-level sensor fusion components discover and speak to the various sensors used in this project.
For further information, please visit: