INESC Porto gives giant step in the healthcare area
INESC Porto has recently finished working on a project that promises to revolutionise the daily life of elderly citizens in Europe, improving their quality of life. CAALYX - Complete Ambient Assisted Living Experiment is a system that provides the elderly population with higher autonomy, offering remote monitoring systems in a transparent and non-intrusive way, making it possible for them to continue living in their homes. This is a powerful and innovative medical monitoring platform that is now preparing for a commercial implementation. Work on the new eCAALYX project started in June and promises to succeed.
United to support elderly citizens in Europe
The idea was created at INESC Porto, as a result of the merging of two distinct project ideas, both related to sensor network technology and presented by Ângelo Martins and Artur Rocha, researchers at the Information and Communication Systems Unit (USIC). After that, contacts were established with European partners of the MEDSI project (a project on the protection of critical infrastructures). INESC Porto and Telefónica Investigación y Desarrollo (Spain), invited to coordinate the project, joined other partners from the United Kingdom (University of Plymouth and Synkronix Ltd.), Germany (Corscience GmbH &Co), Ireland (University of Limerick), Italy (COOSS Marche Onlus) and yet another Spanish partner specialized in geriatrics research (Hospital San Antoni Abat). And thus the team for the CAALYX project was formed. The proposal was then submitted for European funding, have won third place in a set of more than 100 applications.
Financed by the European Union’s 6th R&D Framework Programme, within the IST, in the area of Ambient Assisted Living, the project had a two-year duration, having ended in March 2009. For the team, which included, among other members, Artur Rocha, Ângelo Martins, Ricardo Henriques and Carlos Tavares, meeting the deadline was the hardest challenge. The project included the execution of two field tests with real users, one around the 10th month, and another one around the 21st month. “We have managed to meet the deadlines, but it wasn’t easy”, Artur Rocha reveals, adding that the technical coordinators had to manage the development of software e hardware at the same time in five separate locations, thus compensating for possible failures.
Providing an integrated service is a differentiation factor
INESC Porto’s team responsible for CAALYX describes the system as a permanent monitoring service for the elderly population, that can be used both in and out of the house. “We say that this is a service because that was the project’s differentiating factor: demonstrating that it was possible to provide a scalable and integrated monitoring service (for thousands of senior citizens) that would include all the major stakeholders: senior citizens, family, doctors and support service providers for the elderly population”, Ângelo Martins added.
This remote monitoring system for elderly citizens will allow them to live their daily life in their usual environment at home. They thus become more autonomous and confident. CAALYX provides an indoor (for when the person is at home) and outdoor monitoring platform (for when the person is outside) and a website that doctors can access and read real time information, both from the indoor and outdoor environments. This is the system’s biggest innovation.
Medical monitoring of senior citizens at home
At home, the person is monitored through the use of a computer and a set of “heavy” sensors (scale and blood pressure system). Outside, the person is monitored with the use of a mobile phone and a Wearable Light Device. This device is capable of reading blood pressure, heartbeats, number of respirations per minute, temperature, electrocardiograms, and the physical activity of the user (sitting, laying down, walking, standing).
Monitoring is guided mainly for the detection of alerts (for instance, in the event of a fall), although the system also supports prevention-oriented monitoring: understanding the user’s daily amount of physical activity, obtaining information on the user’s health and prescribing simple treatments. According to the doctors involved in the project, CAALYX is a powerful and innovative platform for medical monitoring. The information that is sent is georeferenced when the position of the elderly citizen is sent to the doctor. When the user is out of the house, it is possible to obtain a GPS position.
INESC Porto’s competences
Which was INESC Porto’s role in this project specifically? USIC was INESC Porto’s unit involved in this project, and responsible for the development of the Java software used on the mobile phone in order to read the data captured by the sensors. The data are then processed and decisions are taken according to those data. Thus, only the information that is relevant to the doctors is filtered, making the information more efficient and faster. The system’s “intelligence” was made possible with a method based on rules from scientific medical studies performed in the context of the CAALYX project.
The project was quite successful. In October 2007 and in November – December 2008, CAALYX achieved an incredible success in Italy where it was tested by the end users. Almost two years later, in March this year, this was one of the most highlighted prototypes in INESC Porto at the 7th Science, Teaching and Innovation Display of the University of Porto. As far as know-how is concerned, according to the USIC team, it was possible to develop an observation mechanism and the system’s acceptance by the doctors involved has been extraordinary. “Doctors find that the device is easy to use, while the end user manages to control completely and directly the behaviour of the monitoring mechanism, without translations or conversions”, USIC’s researchers explain. They also highlight that “this way, it is possible to minimise errors because the doctors know that they are monitoring the patient and the system can be reconfigured in real time”.
eCAALYX – the project that will put CAALYX on the market
CAALYX is unquestionably an innovative system that responds to the long existing needs of elderly citizens. However, we cannot help but questioning the possible implementation of CAALYX in Portugal. Is the typical Portuguese senior citizen ready to use such a system? Before this question, the team is realistic and optimistic at the same time, admitting that “in the beginning, not everyone will be able to afford this technology, not because of the costs of the sensors and equipments (these prices will go down fast when the volume of installations increases), but because of the cost that comes from assembling a service that operates this type of technological infrastructure”. In Northern Europe, “equipment costs are largely compensated by the subsequent decrease in the need for people providing assistance to the elderly population”, the team adds. It is important to highlight that the CAALYX targets the “healthy” autonomous or semi-autonomous elderly citizens who live in their own homes and its intention is to delay, as much as possible, a possible admittance at a nursing home”, the researcher add.
