HexiCare

Objective:

To improve safety and attention for elder people who live under risk conditions of having an accident or going missing through the development of a monitoring tool.

Introduction:

Hexicare is an application for Hexiwear thought for elder people use, integrating a basic vital signal monitor, free fall detection, geolocation system, an emergency button, medicine dose reminders and notifications to family or nurse in order to improve the response time if an emergency is detected.

Problem Description:

To reduce health impacts when advanced age people suffer an accident, time is the key. The target response time after a life-threatening emergency is 8 minutes, the medical attention must be provided on that time. If the emergency is not reported, the response time is directly affected and the injuries might complicate.

A large percentage of senior population have a special requirement in matter of health treatment and most of the time they do not have enough attention or supervision. These situations make them more susceptible to be harmed even at home, considering that the person who suffers the accident is often unable to report the incident.

In addition, this section of the population needs to keep constant health monitoring, like heart rate, corporal temperature and medicine dose and even some of them suffer from Alzheimer which may provoke dementia, hallucination and disorientation this leads old people to wander and most of the times get lost.

High Level Design:

Vital Signals Monitor:

Using the heart rate monitor and the temperature sensor from the Hexiwear, the device will monitor these signals, if the magnitude of these measurements reach an upper or lower level threshold an alarm will be triggered and a notification will be sent to the configured relatives of the user, if these measurements remain on risky levels and the alarm is not shut down after two minutes then Hexicare will notify to the nearest emergency department. If the user´s life is not endangered the alarm can be shut down.

Free fall detection:

Using the Hexiwear accelerometer configured for free fall detection, whenever Hexicare detects free fall the device will notify relatives and the nearest emergency department to attend and assist the user as soon as possible. If the user´s life is not endangered the alarm can be shut down.

Geolocation System:

If the user suffers from dementia or Alzheimer the Hexiwear GPS can be configured to prevent the user from getting lost if goes wandering around to alert configured relatives about the location if the established perimeter is breached.

Emergency Button:

If the user has a health problem Hexicare emergency button can be activated to notify a doctor, emergency services and even family so help can provided on time.

Medicine Dose Reminder:

The user will be able to set multiple reminders for medicine dose.

Notifications and Alerts:

The people who are notified and alerted will be configurable so everyone who’s able to assist the user on any emergency situation receives the information.