An outdoor intelligent healthcare monitoring device for the elderly

The current paper presents an outdoor monitoring system for elderly people, which can transmit information on physiological signals and falling events to a healthcare center at any time and from any place. To detect simultaneously the occurrence of any falling event, as well as the relative electrocardiogram (ECG) signal of the user, a multi-thread method is proposed with the objective of enhancing the response time and the accuracy of detection. A healthcare box is used to determine the relative position of the patient through a global positioning system for fall detection; moreover, an ECG signal acquisition thread is adopted to increase the precision of the fall detection system. Integrating a precise map into the monitoring system facilitates understanding of a client user of the correct location and surrounding environment using the portable display. According to experimental results based on 4,000 samples, successful detection time with the multi-thread method was reduced by 38%, thereby increasing rescue opportunities for elderly patients who are at risk 1 .