Promoting autonomy in care: Combining sensor technology and social robotics for health monitoring

As the world's population is growing significantly older, there is not enough nursing personnel in many countries for all the elderly people in need of care. To promote their autonomy while also reducing the burden of their care-givers, we propose a health monitoring system comprised of a social robot and various wearable and non-wearable sensors. Through the use of patient-reported outcome measurements (PROMs) in conversation with the social robot, the subjective health status of the user is determined. This is supplemented by the objective information gathered from various sensors, such as wearable devices used to measure numerous biosignals and non-wearable camera-based devices for activity detection and emotion recognition. By combining this subjective data obtained through interaction with the user and the objective data from the sensor network, a health report for both users and care-givers is generated. The data is visualized for the user and care-giver in a customizable and easily accessible IoT (internet of things) hub, which also warns the user and their emergency contacts when the data deviates from the expected values or ranges. The goal is to use this health-related information to avoid or decrease doctor visits and hospital stays as changes in the user’s health status can be determined more quickly. The proposed system establishes a good base for further testing and optimization together with the user, to ensure a useful and appropriate combination of sensors and technological devices that the user is comfortable with.