Study for Hydration Management in Elderly People

Abstract

Elderly people are likely to need to urinate more often than in their youth, and thus may encounter the difficult situation of searching for a restroom at inopportune moments. We are researching and developing a system that will allow elderly people who need to urinate frequently to time their trips to the bathroom to accommodate the schedules of their outings. Our proposed system calculates the intervals between urinations based upon the person's schedule and hydration levels, and recommends using the restroom well before the person feels the urge to urinate. In order to implement the system, we have devised a physiological formula for estimation a person's hydration levels through non-invasive means. Based on this estimate, we can then calculate the time between bathroom breaks. In this paper, we describe our system and show experimental results for these calculations.