Computer Monitors to Cue Activities of Daily Living

Older adults living with cognitive disabilities (such as Alzheimer's disease or other forms of dementia) have difficulty completing activities of daily living (ADLs). They forget the proper sequence of tasks that need to be completed, or they lose track of the steps that they have already completed. The current solution is to have a human caregiver assisting the patients at all times, who prompts them for tasks or reminds them of their situation. The dependence on a caregiver is difficult for the patient, and can lead to anger and helplessness, particularly for private ADLs such as using the washroom.  

A cognitive orthosis is a system to automate this caregiving process, in order to provide alternative solutions for patients and to reduce caregiver burden (LoPresti, et al., 2004). Such systems would be able to non-invasively monitor the patient, stepping in to provide help in the form of verbal or visual prompts when necessary, and ensuring the health and safety of the patient. Computer vision is an ideal sensor for such a task because it is not invasive, and has the ability to generalize across tasks. This is in contrast to more invasive and interactive monitoring tools such as bracelets, specialized sensors, or call devices, which may require the patient to ask for help, may need to be carried or attached to the patient, and may need to be re-engineered for each task.

The ultimate goal of a computer-vision based cognitive orthosis for assisting dementia patients during ADLs is to choose a prompting strategy that maximizes some notion of utility over the possible outcomes given visual observations of the patient. 

 http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~jhoey/coach/