Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to develop a health emergency system for the elderly living alone against a health problem, such as a stroke.Firstly, we analyzed in-house movements of the elderly from staying period in rooms placing infrared sensors in each of their rooms.As a result, we found that their staying periods in rooms vary from one room to another. Especially, periods in lavatories, bathrooms and kitchens are shorter. Staying in those rooms longer than usual implies that there is something unusual, perhaps an emergency. Secondly, we determined threshold values based on the data of previous 30 days and we were able to detect some incidences over the threshold. Then, we found that habitual change of the way to use rooms or to go out can be detected as abnormal staying period depending on the usage of room. In addition, we found that staying period in a specific room such as a lavatory also gave us a different kind of useful information on the monitored. In conclusion, it was found that to monitor staying period in rooms can be applied to an automatic emergency call system.
