Can motion sensors predict Alzheimer’s disease?
June 24, 2007 by Liz Lewis
Filed under Diseases & Conditions
A federally funded project run by Oregon Health and Science University is placing sensor monitors in 300 homes around Portland, Oregon.
Why ?
To see if round-the-clock tracking of older person’s activities can provide clues to impeding Alzheimer’s disease.
As Dr Jeffery Kaye explained at the recent Alzheimer’s Association International Conference on Prevention of Dementia, “measuring how people fare at home – on bad days as well as good ones, not just when they’re doing their best for the doctor – may spot changes that signal someone’s at high risk long before they’re actually demented…If you only assess them once-in-a-blue-moon, you really are at a loss to know what they are like on a typical day.” (article)
Tiny sensor monitors are placed in doorways, walls, dishwasher, refrigerator, etc to track the every day routines of people like Elaine Bloomquist who volunteered for this project because she is all too familiar with Alzheimer’s disease. Her husband, his parents, and her mother all had Alzheimer’s disease.
So she has given Dr Kaye permission to spy in the name of science…
An interesting concept, Liz. I wonder if this will draw the criticism that the monitored tracking of Alzheimer’s patients has. Perhaps, because this type of monitoring is done before someone has Alzheimer’s and with their consent, it won’t be viewed the same.