LAUSR

Clinical assessment of behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSD) in nursing homes is often based on staff member’s observations and the use of the Neuropsychiatric Inventory-Nursing Home version (NPI-NH) instrument. This requires continuous observation of the person with BPSD, and a lot of effort and manual input from the nursing home staff. This article presents the DemaWare@NH monitoring framework system, which complements traditional methods in measuring patterns of behavior, namely sleep and stress, for people with BPSD in nursing homes. The framework relies on ambient and wearable sensors for observing the users and analytics to assess their conditions. In our proof-of-concept scenario, four residents from two nursing homes were equipped with sleep and skin sensors, whose data is retrieved, processed and analyzed by the framework, detecting and highlighting behavioral problems, and providing relevant, accurate information to clinicians on sleep and stress patterns. The results indicate that structured information from sensors can ease and improve the understanding of behavioral patterns, and, as a consequence, the efficiency of care interventions, yielding a positive impact on the quality of the clinical assessment process for people with BPSD in nursing homes.