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Elder Care News
'GatorElderaide' May be Next Magical Product from
University Known for Gatorade
UF and IBM create blueprint for ‘smart’ system
monitoring vital signs, activities of elderly and transmitting to
caregivers
July 24, 2007 – The university that gave us
Gatorade for athletes may now have a winning product for senior citizens
– it could be called "GatorElderAide". The University of Florida has
linked up with IBM to create the first-ever roadmap for widespread
commercial development of “smart” devices that, for example, take a
person’s blood pressure, temperature or respiration rate the minute a
person steps into his or her house – then transmit it immediately and
automatically to doctors, family or other caregivers.
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The ease of communications people have come to
expect in cell phones and personal communicators may soon become common
in health-care devices and products at home and in medical offices.
That could eliminate the need for many doctor’s
visits, which are often difficult for the elderly or sick. By enabling
regular updates via text message or e-mail, the technology also could
pave the way for people to share real-time information on their health
or well-being with absent loved ones. And it could prove useful for
doctors who need to keep tabs on many patients at one time by helping
the doctors to prioritize whom to treat first.
“We call it quality-of-life engineering,” said Sumi
Helal, professor of computer engineering and the project’s lead UF
researcher. “It’s really a change of mindset.”
The idea of using technology to provide medical
care at a distance is nothing new. Doctors have relied on “telemedicine”
to communicate with specialists for years. More recently, telemedicine
has been expanded to include, for example, surgeons performing robotic
procedures on distant patients.
But the UF-IBM advance goes a step further: It
provides the technological “stepstones” to make it easy for any company
to manufacture and sell smart networked devices -- while also making
them more user-friendly for consumers.
“UF and IBM both see the need and the opportunity
to integrate the physical world of sensors and other devices directly
into enterprise systems,” said Richard Bakalar, Chief Medical Officer
for IBM. “Doing so in an open environment will remove market inhibitors
that impede innovation in critical industries like health care and open
a broader device market that’s fueled by uninterrupted networking.”
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Helal has devoted the past several years to
developing smart devices for the elderly in a model home known as the
“Gator Tech Smart Home” in Gainesville.
He and his students pioneered the “Smart Wave”
microwave oven that can automatically determine how much time to cook a
frozen meal or keep track of how much salt it contains. Among other
devices, they also created an instrument that records how many steps a
person takes, information that can tell absent caregivers how active its
occupants are.
But these and other devices currently have a major
shortcoming: They require “a team of engineers” to install them, Helal
said. In a world where consumers are accustomed to electronics that
require no more than a power outlet, that dramatically limits their
appeal. “We decided to create a technology that self integrates,” Helal
said. “When you bring it in to the house and plug it in, it
automatically provides its service and finds a path to the outside
world.”
With $60,000 in research funding from IBM, Helal
designed “middleware,” or software and hardware that glues together
different systems, that can give his and any similar health-aid devices
this independence and connectivity. Importantly, the software is based
on open standards, or publicly available specifications useable by
anyone, such as those now being made available by consortiums of
technology companies including Eclipse, W3C and OSGi.
Open standards make it easy for product developers
to tap the technology in any new smart assistive devices, Helal said.
That, in turn, will make the devices more common.
The hardware component of the system is an
inexpensive sensor platform about half the size of a business card.
Developed at UF and licensed to Pervasa, a Gainesville-based UF spinoff
company headed by Helal, the “Atlas” platform makes it easy to create a
network of sensors and make their information available on a computer
network.
The advance is crucial given the increasing number
of elderly Americans. The number of people 85 and over is expected to
rise from 4.2 million in 2000 to 6.1 million in 2010 and 9.6 million by
2030, according to federal government statistics. Meanwhile, the
percentage of older Americans living alone will either remain high or
continue to grow: About half of women and nearly a quarter of men aged
75 and older currently live alone.
But the UF-IBM technology may also prove useful in
many other medical settings. For example, Helal said, it could help
emergency rooms operate more safely. Rather than a standard waiting
list, patients could be equipped with networked wireless monitors of
their vital signs, allowing doctors to determine who in a waiting room
needs the most immediate care.
>> “Gator
Tech Smart Home” in Gainesville Website
>>
Sumi Helal
>>
University of Florida
>>
IBM
>> Licensed to
Pervasa
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