The Design and Development of a Wearable Multi-Posture Detection Body Sensor Network and Real-Time Wireless Alarm System Platform

As the medical treatment technologies have fast evolution and long term progress, people in Taiwan and all over the world are facing aging problems. While the health care man power becomes less and less, most works of the formal and non-emergent health promotion, health assessment and elderly health care, have to rely on novel methodologies and through the assistance of technologies. Health promotion is to adequately inform people in all ages for proper activities (e.g. walking) and correct daily postures (e.g. correct standing posture and walking posture, etc.) so that people can watch their status, keep healthy and avoid suffering from chronic diseases earlier; Health assessment is to provide long term body posture information (e.g. gait symmetry, body balancing index and stability, etc.) for those healthy people in middle and elder ages so that they can find if there are any early syndromes of some diseases, such as stroke, Parkinson’s Disease, and low back pain to prevent or start treatments earlier; As for the purpose of elderly health care, it is to monitor their postures in real-time and provide the early warnings or emergent alarms of some urgent situations (e.g. stroke, fall, etc.). As a result, the elderly people can still enjoy healthy life style while the lacking of the health care man power. The goals of this research proposal are to design and develop a “Wearable multi-posture detection body sensor network” and a “Real-time wireless alarm system platform” which is suitable for remote medical cares in all aspects. This system platform will provide an easy to put on body sensor network for the real-time monitoring and detection of various body postures and daily activities, as well as provide statistic information and emergency detections and remote alarms. Eventually, this proposed research can provide a body posture recognition based medical information system for health promotion, health assessment and health care so that it can help to achieve the goal of healthy aging.

Project ID:PB10107-1745
External Project ID:NSC101-2221-E182-027