Using State-of-Art Technology to Design Health and Fitness Promotion Products for the Elderly

People living in this modern age run their living in a sedentary lifestyle, spending most hours of a day dealing with heavy workload at the office but always leaving no time for getting some exercises. Numerous researches have stated that sedentary lifestyle has absolutely significant relevance on developing into cardiovascular disease. However, people need great motivation before they are willing to get their shirt wet doing exercises, because one won’t last for long as his or her exercises are only for temporary pleasure or purposeless goal. Therefore, this research aims its’ target group on people aged over 45, and through literature review, researchers find and study the exercise motivation of middle- age/ aged groups. Furthermore, researchers will particularly design exercise prescription for each case according to the different physiological statuses and exercise motivations of different individuals. Researchers will also consider each user’s exercise frequency in order to provide proper exercise intensity and frequency to them so that the sport injuries induced by heavy and strenuous exercises can be reduced. Hence, this research is an attempt to help active users improve and strengthen their body fitness for later leisure-life after their retirements, as well their ability of effectively coping with unexpected incidents. This research is a cross-field joint project that gathers professional physicians and engineers to co-develop a conceptual product that helps improve body fitness of elders and elder-to-be. Furthermore, with the wireless transmission and RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) applications we integrate individual physiological data into portable-electronic files. Users can acquire information on self-body condition at any time/place and be able to receive proper exercise prescription and record individually. By checking up individual’s history of exercise we can observe and evaluate whether there’s physical degeneration or body deterioration occurs along with one’s aging, and then offer correct advices to the user telling which exercise is more required to meet his/her fitness.

Project ID:PB9911-0321
External Project ID:NSC99-2218-E182-007