Distributed Computing and Monitoring Technologies for Older Patients

This book summarizes various approaches for the automatic detection of health threats to older patients at home living alone. The text begins by briefly describing those who would most benefit from healthcare supervision. The book then summarizes possible scenarios for monitoring an older patient at home, deriving the common functional requirements for monitoring technology. Next, the work identifies the state of the art of technological monitoring approaches that are practically applicable to geriatric patients. A survey is presented on a range of such interdisciplinary fields as smart homes, telemonitoring, ambient intelligence, ambient assisted living, gerontechnology, and aging-in-place technology. The book discusses relevant experimental studies, highlighting the application of sensor fusion, signal processing and machine learning techniques. Finally, the text discusses future challenges, offering a number of suggestions for further research directions.

Juris Klonovs is a PhD student in the Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering at Aalborg University Copenhagen, Denmark.

Mohammad A. Haque is a PhD Fellow in the Department of Architecture, Design and Media Technology at Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark.

Dr. Volker Krueger is a Professor and Head of the Robotics, Vision and Machine Intelligence group in the Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering at Aalborg University Copenhagen, Denmark. His other publications include the Springer title Visual Analysis of Humans – Looking at People.

Dr. Kamal Nasrollahi is an Associate Professor in Computer Vision in the Department of Architecture, Design and Media Technology at Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark.

Dr. Karen Andersen-Ranberg is an Associate Professor in the Danish Aging Research Center at the University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark. She is also a Specialist Consultant in Geriatrics and Internal Medicine at Odense University Hospital.

Dr. Thomas B. Moeslund is a Professor in the Department of Architecture, Design and Media Technology at Aalborg University, Denmark, where he serves as Head of Media Technology, and Head of the Visual Analysis of People Lab. His other publications include the Springer titles Computer Vision in Sports, Introduction to Video and Image Processing, andVisual Analysis of Humans – Looking at People.

Dr. Erika G. Spaich is an Associate Professor in the Department of Health Science and Technology at Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark.