Monitoring Living Activities of the Elderly Living Alone Using a Lifeline

Abstract

As the population ages and the number of older people living alone in Japan increases, creating a society in which they can continue to live safely in their home environments became a pressing issue. Currently proposed IT-based monitoring systems have some drawbacks such as bothersome restrictions and psychological burden. Recently, several systems that monitor essential utilities, and that were non-restraining, non-intrusive, and automatic, have been proposed, but few reports have been made on longer-term experiments. Focusing on “tap water,” which is critical to maintain life and changes in living activities, this study conducted a one-year monitoring of the elderly living alone based on their water usage data. The subjects were 8 seniors of 75 and over living alone in a remote area (2 males, 6 females; average age 84.6±4.2; seven in treatment of cardiovascular diseases). The water flow measured in time unit of five minutes was recorded in the cloud server to monitor the elderly’s water usage. The purpose of this study was to monitor the water usage pattern of the elderly living alone and to verify the time unit proper to infer their daily living activities and patterns. Analysis was conducted to see how they use water in different time units (hour, week, month, and season). Analyzing the relations between the living activities to be studied and the time units for data aggregation identified the time units proper to infer daily living activities, indicating that the system could be effective as a tool to monitor independent living of the elderly.