Well-Being Sense

The Problem:

The dramatic increase in global life expectancy over the last few decades and the corresponding increase in the number of dementia patients is putting increasing pressure on families and nursing homes to provide best in class care for dementia sufferers. High care costs, full employment and staff burnout are some of the issues faced in improving care provision. It is estimated that 35.6 million people lived with dementia worldwide in 2010, with numbers projected to nearly double every 20 years, to 65.7 million in 2030.

The Solution:

The platform provides a vision based sensing that takes real-time input from commodity camera systems to provide real-time classification and alerts to carers, medical staff or family members relating to a dementia sufferers’ well-being. The system is unique in that it can detect subject stress levels from a live feed with a high degree of accuracy in cross-fold validation. The platform is highly extensible and the accuracy and robustness of the system can be improved by augmenting input data feeds such as adding sound sensors or low cost commodity wearable devices such as a Fitbit.

Applications:

Applications range from home care to private nursing homes, or anywhere a system is needed to provide cognitive and emotional insights on individuals and groups. Well-Being Sense can be easily installed locally or cloud based. The data used by the platform can be deleted after processing or stored for regulatory purposes if required.

Stage of Development:

The Sigma research group in CIT have developed a working prototype. To date, the Well-Being Sense platform has been successfully tested in a laboratory setting to monitor and recognise stress indicators in dementia sufferers.

The project will next proceed to developing a full software and machine learning platform which can be used to communicate the well-being of patients being monitored by the system to carers, medical staff and family members.

System Architecture:

Opportunity:

CIT is seeking expert feedback and potential business partners with the necessary contacts network, experience and skills to assist in further developing this technology.