Prof Tristian Braud
Dementia encompasses a variety of conditions characterized by a decline in cognitive abilities that ultimately impairs the older person’s ability to perform independent activities of daily functions. In most cases, dementia is associated with a progressive decline that needs to be addressed through accurate assessment data to provide appropriate treatment and care. By accurately assessing the state of the older persons, healthcare professionals will be able to devise individualized care plans to support them, provide appropriate care, and eventually slow down the mental decline. However, providing an accurate assessment of the dementia persons’ state remains a challenge as healthcare professionals and informal caregivers cannot constantly be present to observe and monitor them. This project will develop a sophisticated sensing system to provide diagnostics and care assistance tools to monitor the dementia person’s condition in residential care homes for the elderly, and thereby providing healthcare professionals and informal caregivers with an accurate summary of the older person’s condition.
The proposed system will rely on a wide range of sensing technologies, ranging from simple vitals monitoring on wearables to posture and gait analysis through privacy ensured sensing located in residential care homes for the elderly. The information from the sensors will be aggregated through advanced machine learning techniques to present the large amount of data in a readable format to provide useful and relevant diagnostic and care assistance tools to healthcare professionals.