Study eyes ‘senior sensors’

Thursday, December 4, 2008 9:57 AM EST

By Luther Turmelle
North Bureau Chief - New Haven Register

A new study involving researchers at Quinnipiac University and senior citizens living in the Masonicare health care and retirement community in Wallingford will attempt to determine whether the use of wireless sensor technology will allow the elderly to live on their own longer.

The two-year study, which was announced Wednesday, will use sensors made by a Minnesota-based company, Healthsense.

Researchers, which will study two groups of 34 residents who reside in independent and assisted living residences on the Masonicare campus, officials of the Hamden-based school said.

“The first goal of the research is fairly simple: we want to see if there is any difference between the two groups ... in terms of admissions to hospitals and/or nursing homes,” said Catherine Meriano, a professor of Occupational Therapy at Quinnipiac and a lead investigator overseeing the study. “Second, we’ll compare the two groups to see how they fare from a functionality standpoint — for example, whether residents with access to the sensor technology are able to maintain their activities of daily living, such as dressing, bathing and cooking, for longer.”

One of the study groups will consists of seniors living in residences equipped with Healthsense’s eNeighbor monitoring system. The other group will be made up of residents who do not have the technology in their homes.

The is the first of its kind in the New England area and among the first nationally to examine whether integrated sensor technology can help seniors age safely and comfortably in their own homes, said Jim Albert, Masonicare’s chief information officer and vice president of Information Services. “There’s very little research on the value of using sensors to reduce, eliminate or delay hospitalization, nursing home admission or emergency room visits by providing earlier detection of incidents or potential incidents that might lead to harm,” Albert said. “The benefits of the technology are potentially enormous, not just in improving the health and quality of life of seniors, but also in reducing the cost of aging services. Healthsense’s eNeighbor system uses a variety of sensors in seniors’ residences to monitor their daily activities and detect unexplained changes in their behavior that might require assistance.

Components of the system include:

Devices that can detect whether a medicine container is being tilted to keep track of medication usage.
Motion detectors on walls to detect movement within rooms.
Contact sensors on kitchen cupboards and refrigerator doors to monitor whether the resident is eating regularly and devices on toilets to monitor bathroom usage.

Using algorithms to predict residents’ behavior based on their individual habits and lifestyle, eNeighbor’s operating system analyzes data from the sensors to determine whether the resident requires assistance and automatically issues alerts if it is determined that help is needed.

The results of the study will enable Healthsense to show potential customers the value of its products, said

Gary Hopkins, a spokesman for the company, said Healthsense’s monitoring sensor are already in use in elder care facilities in Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan Wisconsin and Virginia, but this is the first time that the company has taken part in a study of this magnitude, Hopkins said.

“It’s a pretty new technology; our longest customers have only had it for two years,” he said. “This study will provide more recognition for our technology.”