A mobile-health application to detect wandering patterns of elderly people in home environment

Wandering is a common and risky behavior in people with dementia (PWD). In this paper, we present a mobile healthcare application to detect wandering patterns in indoor settings. The application harnesses consumer electronics devices including WiFi access points and mobile phones and has been tested successfully in a home environment. Experimental results show that the mobile-health application is able to detect wandering patterns including lapping, pacing and random in real-time. Once wandering is detected, an alert message is sent using SMS (Short Message Service) to attending caregivers or physicians for further examination and timely interventions.